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A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 



BOOKS BY JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, Ph.D. 

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE AND OTHER 

ESSAYS .... (Postage extra) net $1.00 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTEN- 

MENT (Epochs of Philosophy) . . net 1.50 

LOGIC, DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE net 1.40 

THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY . net 1.00 

HEGEL'S LOGIC net 1.25 



A 
DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 



BY 



JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Stuart Professor of Logic, Princeton University 



\ 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
NEW YORK : : : : : 1911 



^^ 



Copyright, 191 1, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published April, 19 11 




©CLA28C433 



tETo 

MOSES TAYLOR PYNE 

A FRIEND FOR WHOM 
MY PREJUDICE NEEDS NO DEFENCE 



CONTENTS 



I. A Defence of Prejudice . . 

II. The Philosophy of Opposition 

III. The Paradox of Research 

IV. On Responsibility . . . 
V. The Whole and the Part . 

VI. The Gospel of Might . . 

VII. The Dialectic Imagination 

VIII. The Art of Thinking . . 

IX. The Vocation of the Scholar 

X. The Superfluous in Education 

XI. Secondary Strains .... 



PAGE 

I 

18 
36 
52 
68 

84 
103 
119 

139 
iS4 
168 



I 

A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

TX^HAT is prejudice ? Is it always some- 
thing unreasonable ? Is it to be re- 
garded necessarily as an intruder among the 
more sober activities of the mind ? Is it the 
enemy of clear thinking ? Is it the counterfeit 
of a true judgment ? There are many who 
would give an unqualified assent to these char- 
acterizations of the nature of prejudice. I am 
persuaded, however, that there is a certain 
form of prejudice that admits of a rational de- 
fence. In this defence, moreover, I am not 
taking merely the part of a devil's advocate; 
but, on the contrary, I am profoundly con- 
vinced that there is a prejudice which has a 
proper place in the processes of the mind, and 
must be reckoned with as a natural factor in 
our thinking, and is not to be regarded in any 
sense as an abnormal and disturbing element. 
It is very easy to insist that reason should be 
free from all taint of prejudice; but no one 



2 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

actually maintains consistently and continu- 
ously so high an ideal as this in practice. This 
is not merely a confession of weakness that 
prejudices will steal into the deliberations of 
reason despite our most vigilant guard, and in 
the face of protest and serious effort on our 
part to drive them out; there is, on the con- 
trary, substantial ground for the contention that 
prejudice has a legitimate function to perform 
amidst the varied activities of the mind. 

A prejudice is not always an unreasonable 
judgment; it may be merely a judgment which 
is unreasoned. There is a vast difference to 
be noted in this distinction. An unreasonable 
judgment is, of course, contrary to reason and 
therefore reason itself must repudiate it. But the 
judgment which is simply unreasoned may prove 
in the course of events to be eminently reason- 
able, and as such even in its unreasoned form 
may serve a most useful purpose in our thinking. 

These unreasoned judgments are absolutely 
indispensable in the economy of our mental 
life. If we exclude all judgments which are 
not accompanied by a satisfactory proof of 
their validity, a tremendous waste of time and 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 3 

energy would inevitably result. For it is a fun- 
damental law of our intellectual activity that 
the processes of reason by which w T e arrive at 
certain conclusions often drop out of memory: 
but the conclusions themselves remain as a 
permanent deposit of knowledge. The proof 
which we once knew and perfectly understood 
may be forgotten, but the truth which it served 
to establish is lodged permanently in the mem- 
ory. The history of its origin we can no longer 
recall to mind. It has no recognized ances- 
try; because much of our knowledge changes 
form in the processes of assimilation. Its orig- 
inal setting is forgotten. It appears, therefore, 
as a detached judgment. It is a part of the 
stored energy of thought. The truth has be- 
come ours in a peculiar sense inasmuch as it 
has been merged into the very texture of our 
thought. There may also be associated with it 
the impression, indefinite and vague though it 
be, that as a reasoned judgment it once passed 
muster and received the endorsement of reason. 
The proof is forgotten, the credentials are lost, 
but the thought remains. Although for the 
moment it cannot be justified by the law of 



4 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

sufficient reason, it nevertheless is allowed a 
place in our world of knowledge. The econ- 
omy of the thought processes not only warrants 
such a procedure, but demands it as a neces- 
sary method in all of our thinking. Any im- 
pression which we vaguely recognize but cannot 
justify rationally must certainly be regarded as 
a form of prejudice. 

We have only to examine our store of knowl- 
edge in order to discover what a vast amount 
of it is represented by these remote survivals of 
past study and travail of mind. The princi- 
ples of a science, for instance, are remembered 
and accepted as true, and it may be at times 
are used by us in some practical emergency; 
and yet how mysteriously vague and elusive 
seem the proofs upon which they rest and 
which we long ago so carefully mastered. We 
assent with complete confidence to the Newton- 
ian law of universal attraction; we believe that 
the earth moves around the sun; we are in 
complete accord with the proposition that the 
square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled 
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on 
the two sides. There is indeed an uncomfort- 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 5 

able familiarity about these utterances. But 
when we are pressed for a justification of our 
belief in statements such as these, then all that 
we can say perhaps is simply that in a general 
way there is a true ring about them. In other 
words, they are judgments to which we give 
assent, but which we cannot prove, — that is, 
prejudices. And yet the fact that they partake 
of the hospitality of our minds is not to be 
regarded necessarily as a weak concession of 
ignorance on our part, but rather the normal 
manner in which the laborious processes of 
past thinking are definitely concentrated and 
recorded. 

I think we will all recognize a similar mental 
experience if we stop to challenge our opinions 
concerning the character of a person or of a 
period in history. There are a few instance: , 
perhaps, concerning which we have recently re- 
freshed our memory or which lie, it may be, iF • 
the immediate sphere of our especial study and 
interest that lend themselves to a satisfactory 
and adequate interpretation. Outside of an 
exceedingly circumscribed area, however, we 
find ourselves unable to justify certain esti- 



6 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

mates of character, certain impressions of a 
sense of value and significance, which we never- 
theless firmly maintain, and that often with 
feeling and fervor. We have opinions, possi- 
bly very pronounced, regarding the character 
of the Black Prince, or of Poppaea, or of St. 
Francis; but would it not be difficult, if not 
altogether impossible, to justify each judgment 
by an array of indisputable facts which we 
could summon upon call from the remote 
stretches of the memory ? If we cannot sup- 
port our opinions by adequate proof, is it not 
quite correct to regard them in the light of 
prejudices ? And if we rid our stock of knowl- 
edge consistently and thoroughly of all such 
prejudices, are we not impoverishing our minds 
for the sake of an ideal which is quixotic and 
Impossible ? The rigor of reason must be tem- 
pered in this respect to the natural limitations 
pf our mental powers. 

There is still another kind of prejudice which 
is similar to that just considered, namely — the 
class of judgments which are born of other 
minds and which nevertheless we come to 
appropriate as our own. The reasons in which 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 7 

such judgments are grounded we have never 
examined ourselves, — possibly we could never 
understand them even if they were presented 
to us with the most elaborate explanations; 
and yet these second-hand judgments cannot 
be eliminated wholly from our body of knowl- 
edge without an incalculable loss. The pri- 
mary sources of knowledge are not available 
to all persons. There are many truths which 
are supported only upon expert testimony, and 
which nevertheless become the common prop- 
erty of mankind. Knowledge comes by reflec- 
tion as well as by assimilation. And the light 
that is reflected from another's mind we should 
never despise; for there is a community in the 
treasures of thought. We possess far more 
than we earn. There is a universal liberty of 
appropriation; for the wealth of knowledge like 
the bounty of nature is free to all. If, therefore, 
we exclude these prejudices of reflected opinion 
from our thinking, no harvest of thought is 
possible save that of our own sowing and till- 
ing. And this would signify an appreciable 
shrinking of our world in all of its dimensions; 
for there is no thought, however original, which 



8 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

does not rest to some extent at least upon a 
credit basis. 

There is another class of judgments which 
merits the name of prejudice. It comprises 
those judgments whose source may be traced 
to the subconscious states of the mind. We 
must acknowledge that much of our thinking 
is singularly affected by the processes which 
are connected with the more obscure activi- 
ties of thought. There is a secret collaborator 
within, whose contributions do not seem to bear 
the stamp of our own creation, but which we 
have no hesitation in claiming and using as 
our own. They are ours and yet not ours. 
We must not fall into the error, however, of 
characterizing these judgments which spring 
from the subconscious region of the mind as 
abnormal. They, on the contrary, are the nor- 
mal reflex of our conscious activities. They 
may be trusted to the extent that we trust the 
judgments which we form through the con- 
scious procedure of reason. The intuitions of 
a fool are not wisdom. On the other hand 
however, if the exercise of our faculties at the 
focal point of consciousness is uniformly true, 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 9 

then it follows naturally that the activities 
which find play within the penumbral area of 
our minds will be determined by a like habit. 
If reason is the controlling factor in the con- 
scious evolution of our opinions generally, then 
reason will hold sway within the realm of the 
subconscious operations; but if on the con- 
trary we have formed the habit of following 
the suggestions of fugitive feelings, of whim 
and caprice, we may be quite sure that we will 
discover no trace of any oracle of wisdom 
within the hidden depths of the mind. We 
are all aware of the activity of these under- 
currents of reason in our thinking. We reach 
certain conclusions without being conscious of 
the process of reasoning connected with them. 
They are so little a part of us that they 
seem prepared for us rather than produced 
by us. 

We find ourselves, for instance, face to face 
with a new situation presenting problems which 
we have never before considered. A quick de- 
cision must be made. There is no time for 
mature deliberation. It is necessary to judge 
of the trustworthiness of a man, or of the 



io A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

wisdom of a business venture, or of the prob- 
able success or failure of a proposed policy. 
The circumstances force us to make what may 
seem to be a snap judgment. To state a defi- 
nite reason as the ground of our decision is 
altogether impossible. Behind the decision is 
a play of subtle forces producing a certain total 
impression which cannot be expressed in words, 
and which stubbornly resists all attempts on 
our part to analyze it. It is not amenable to 
the control of the reason, nor does it appear 
in any form which enters as a familiar factor 
in the usual processes of our thinking. It is 
a prejudice, if you please — a judgment whose 
force we are constrained to recognize but whose 
truth we cannot possibly prove. It is sufficient 
to provoke action, but it is not adequate to jus- 
tify itself. In such a case the subconscious ac- 
tivities seem to conserve the essential elements 
of our conscious experiences. A man with a 
wide knowledge of his fellows has accumulated, 
day after day, year after year, a wealth of expe- 
rience which becomes a part of himself — not 
consciously formulated in maxims of wisdom, 
but assimilated and stored in the deep recesses 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE n 

of his nature. In every one of us there is a 
high potential of this kind of unformulated ex- 
perience. It represents the abiding mood and 
general disposition of the man; it is a sort of 
diffused sagacity which eludes all attempts at 
definition. However, when occasion offers it 
becomes at once active and efficient. It di- 
rects our purposes and gives a final cast to 
our judgments. We trust it instinctively and 
yet withal blindly; but who shall say unreason- 
ably? 

Our subconscious activities, however, not 
only serve to mediate a quick decision, but they 
tend as well to precipitate a delayed decision. 
One finds himself again and again confronted 
with a situation wherein he is torn now in one 
direction, and now in another. The arguments 
pro and con are nicely balanced. Out of the 
bewilderment of mind, or even of an agony of 
spirit, there will come a settling of the will 
toward one of the rival alternatives, and a de- 
cided dip of the scales. In such an experience 
the mind is aware of a certain compulsion which 
seems to transcend its conscious autonomy. 
There is a welling up of the subconscious stream 



iz A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

from its source in the depths of that buried life 
which makes every man a mystery to himself. 
At times the most momentous decisions of life 
are reached through the mediation of these in- 
fluences which, while they may not be con- 
trary to reason, nevertheless transcend it. 

It is then that a man seems to be a pas- 
sive spectator. Something within acts for him. 
He finds himself determined by a deep-seated 
prejudice, as he is constrained to confess, if he 
ever pauses to reflect upon it at all. Is not 
one's profession, or hobby, or the cause to 
which he may give his life, or his absorbing 
pursuits, a revelation in some degree at least 
of his most deeply rooted prejudices ? But will 
any one maintain, however, that he would wish 
to be freed from all such influences ? Are they 
not an integral part of his being ? And are not 
the hidden powers of his nature after all the 
measure of the man ? 

There is still another function which our 
prejudices fulfil; they serve to produce the 
overtones of character. It is the overtone that 
gives a distinctive quality to sound; and, in a 
similar manner, character may be regarded as 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 13 

having its peculiar timbre. There is a certain 
ring about a man's character — it is true or 
false, pleasing or unpleasing, harmonious or 
discordant, as the case may be. Reason may 
determine the tone, but it is the prejudice which 
often produces the overtone. We love a man 
on account of his prejudices; we hate him also 
for a like reason. Strip a man of his preju- 
dices, and only the commonplace remains. In- 
dividuality is the projection of our prejudices. 
Remove the prejudices and the individual is 
merged again with the crowd. He is only one 
of many. He no longer appeals to our imagina- 
tion. There is no more of interest or charm or 
power about him. Character without a dash 
of prejudice is insipid. A man without a fair 
amount of prejudice in his nature always lacks 
intensity of conviction. There may be a glow 
of intellectual light, but there is a conspicuous 
absence of fire and driving power. There is 
often a certain judicial poise of mind which 
reveals itself in a tolerance that is an indica- 
tion of weakness rather than strength. Such a 
man never lets himself go. He always sees 
two sides to every question, and can never com- 



14 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

mit himself to the one or the other. Freedom 
from prejudice is often indicated by a vacil- 
lation which is pitifully weak and ineffectual. 
What distinct and striking impression would 
the character of Carlyle make upon us, were 
it to be separated completely from his prej- 
udices ? or would it be possible to read Bos- 
well's Johnson, if the work were to be expur- 
gated of everything which savors of a prejudice ? 
It is also the prejudices underlying character, 
the prejudices of good sense and of good taste, 
which often operate as a safeguard against the 
temptations of the reason; for reason has its 
temptations as well as the passions — not true 
reason, but the subtle casuistry of reason. It 
is easy in the times of extraordinary pressure 
to convince oneself that the worse cause is really 
the better, that darkness is light, and light 
darkness. Then it is that the prejudices which 
are deeply grounded in our nature tend to 
steady us. It is possible by plausible sophistries 
to justify many a course of action wherein our 
clear vision has been dimmed by the allure- 
ments of sense, of selfish interests, of greed and 
ambition. But at the last we shrink from 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 15 

doing the very thing which we had proposed, 
and which we had rationally defended. There 
is something within which gives us pause. We 
are saved in spite of ourselves, even in spite 
of reason itself. We find ourselves under the 
restraint of some undefinable feeling, some 
fancy, a prejudice indeed, which calls to us 
from the mass of old-fashioned principles 
which we had thought forever banished, but 
which the sophistication induced by an inti- 
mate experience with the world had not wholly 
eradicated. No power which operates upon the 
human mind is stronger or more permanent in 
its control than this prejudice of honor. There 
are certain persons who seem to be almost per- 
versely conscientious; their native shrewdness 
and the stirrings of the egoistic instincts are 
constantly overbalanced by their sense of hon- 
esty and the overpowering compulsion of their 
altruistic impulses. 

It is in the transition times, when reason is 
obscured by interest or extinguished by pas- 
sion, that the commanding voice of prejudice 
enters its caveat to which it is well to give 
heed, and instant obedience. Prejudice thus 



16 A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 

proves in many instances to be a saving grace. 
It is the instinctive morality after all which is 
the supreme test of character. There is a cal- 
culated virtue, a wisdom always seeking to be 
justified of her children, which nevertheless 
does not reveal the man as he really is. His 
innate tastes and propensities, however, the 
whole body of his unreasoned predilections 
and impulses which are the natural soil of prej- 
udice, serve to disclose a man to himself and 
to others as the very mirror of reality itself. 
If human nature were devoid of prejudice, the 
heroics of morality would never be written. 
That impulsive nobility which is the flower of 
character is the kind of prejudice which at 
times flies in the face of reason, following the 
irresistible lead of its own nature in the scorn 
of consequence. But is it not in turn approved 
of reason itself, when we come to pronounce a 
deliberate judgment upon its moral worth ? 
The prejudice which outstrips reason may 
nevertheless draw reason after her in her 
flight, so that the two may eventually meet 
in mutual recognition and harmony. The 
prejudice, therefore, which transcends reason, 



A DEFENCE OF PREJUDICE 17 

or which anticipates reason, or which is in 
secret born of reason, is not, necessarily con- 
trary to reason, but may be rationally de- 
fended and justified. 



II 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

' I A HE University of Berlin is celebrating this 
autumn, of the year 1910, its one hundredth 
anniversary. The beginnings of this educational 
enterprise were intimately associated with its 
pioneer professor and rector — the patriot, phi- 
losopher, and teacher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 
who by his labors and personality gave to the 
university the early promise of distinction which 
through the course of its history it has so brill- 
iantly realized. There is a phase of the philos- 
ophy of Fichte which profoundly affected the 
moral traditions, not only of the university, but 
of the German people generally, and which 
should prove exceedingly suggestive to all who 
may be concerned with a practical philosophy of 
life. 

This idea of Fichte's I would characterize as 
the philosophy of opposition. His theory was 
born of experience, and through bitter years of 

adversity and deprivation he evolved the car- 

18 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 19 

dinal doctrine of his practical creed: — that, in 
the making of a man, power is born of oppo- 
sition; that struggle begets strength; that re- 
sistance provokes vigor of body and of spirit; 
and that the very obstacles to progress make 
progress possible. This was not merely the 
teaching of the class-room. It became the 
dominant note of his stirring appeal to the Ger- 
man nation. By his challenge of circumstance, 
Fichte sought to arouse his countrymen from 
the torpor of humiliation which had been in- 
duced by the disasters of the Napoleonic wars. 
In his "Addresses to the German Nation" he 
endeavored to awaken the spirit of the people to 
an appreciation of the fundamental truth that 
the distress of the nation is the opportunity of 
the patriot; and that out of the depths of adver- 
sity it is possible for a people to arise to a new 
life of strength and power. In this he appeared 
not only as a priest to the national conscience, 
but as a prophet of the nation's destiny. 

Fichte's philosophy, however, is not for the 
past alone, nor exclusively for the German peo- 
ple; but now, after a century, and in reference 
to the present-day problems of life, we may 



20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

well pause to consider the kindly offices of op- 
position in the evolution of human capacity 
and character. Human nature is the same the 
world over; and, quite irrespective of the age 
or of the land in which one may happen to live, 
it remains universally true that man is born to 
struggle, not only for what he may wish to 
possess, but also for what he is fitted to become. 
We are in this world to fight. Under what 
banner does one draw his sword ? That is the 
question of chief interest and concern. 

The earliest consciousness of self, the vague 
impression of one's individuality as distinct from 
the world about him, comes to the child, when 
for the first time he becomes aware of the bar- 
riers of his young life. As he puts forth his 
hand, and feels the first shock of opposition as a 
check upon his free activity, then and there he 
experiences the first throb of personality. The 
" I," the heart of his being, the inner self, is re- 
vealed by the resistance of the things or forces 
about him which he must encounter, and 
which he recognizes instinctively as something 
different from the self within, and never to be 
confused with it. The power of self-assertion 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 21 

is provoked by the very power which opposes 
the inner self and seeks to overcome it. 

And later in life there often comes a second 
awakening to a more profound sense of person- 
ality, when we find ourselves amidst a storm of 
opposition which emerges in some significant 
crisis of our experience. Such a crisis may 
mark not only a new birth of power, but also 
a new order of being. It is often a moral 
renaissance. Under the fire of opposition, in 
the collision of opinion, a new spirit is quick- 
ened, daring great things and capable of great 
things. In an experience of such a nature, 
one realizes that he is something more than 
a human machine; that he is not a puppet 
nor a slave; nor a being, merely to feed and 
sleep and play; nor a creature caught in the 
toils of circumstance, but a man and as such 
bound to recognize the truth that man's voca- 
tion is a call to freedom and to duty. 

It is well for us if we early recognize the fact 
that every difficulty in life is a challenge. Is 
there something within the man to meet it, or 
not ? That is the question which every one 
must ask himself. Upon his response his fate 



22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

is fixed. Obstacles suggest opportunities, if 
they are only regarded in their true light; they 
put a man upon his mettle, stimulate his en- 
ergies, strengthen his power of resistance, in- 
crease his art of resource, and inspire a spirit of 
courage and determination. If there is any 
latent power, resistance discovers it. The line 
of least resistance, on the other hand, can never 
be the line of development and of progress; for 
then there is nothing to call forth hidden pos- 
sibilities. But resistance creates necessarily a 
demand for new methods and devices, new 
processes, new inventions, the conservation of 
forces, and the more considerate direction of 
effort. 

Not only, however, is progress assured by 
overcoming resistance, and in spite of it, but 
resistance itself is an essential factor in prog- 
ress. No leverage is possible without the re- 
sisting medium of a fulcrum; so that without 
resistance it would be impossible for us to get a 
foothold upon the earth even in the ordinary act 
of walking. We know that it is not the strength 
of the arm only, but the stubborn stuff of the 
bow which speeds the arrow. It is a common- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 23 

place, moreover, of electrical theory, that a cur- 
rent of electricity, passing freely through its 
conducting wire, gives no visible evidence of its 
existence; but when it meets the resistance of 
the carbon points, it bursts into light. The 
illumination results from the opposition offered 
by the resisting medium, and this generates heat 
of such intensity as to become incandescent and 
the bearer of light. In the world also of human 
affairs and relations, much of the light has its 
source in the clash of opposing forces, and the 
struggle to overcome resistance. 

Life is a game, we say; and from time to time 
we urge one another to play the game fair and 
to a finish. In this reference, we must remem- 
ber that the zest of a game consists in one's skill 
to overcome opposition. An opponent who 
fails to call forth our best endeavor deadens 
interest in the sport, whatever it may be. A 
one-sided contest means loose playing and flag- 
ging zeal; on the other hand, the more skilled 
and alert an adversary, the more resourceful 
and aggressive our game. In the contests of 
life where there is no worthy competitor, there 
can be but slight achievement and little glory. 



24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

The uphill game, however, which is won 
through no adventitious aid of favor or fortune, 
but solely upon its merits and by stubborn per- 
sistence, brings a glow of satisfaction which is 
wholly unknown in the triumph of an easy vic- 
tory. We do not care to play with a novice, we 
demand the rigor of the game, and free scope 
for the display of our powers. It is possible, 
therefore, to meet the opposition which life holds 
for us, in the spirit of adventure, and ride forth 
to meet the foe with high hope and the joy of 
battle in our heart. 

This idea, however, which would represent 
life as a game, does not adequately portray the 
true philosophy of opposition. The game con- 
ception of life emphasizes perhaps too much the 
idea of victory or defeat; for to overcome in 
life is not merely to win a victory, but it is 
rather to gain a mastery over the powers which 
oppose us. And complete mastery is possible 
only when we learn the secret of transforming 
opposing powers into co-operative agencies in 
serving our needs and ministering to our pur- 
poses. There is a savage superstition that 
every foe killed in battle surrenders his spirit 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 25 

of valor and courage to the one who slays him. 
In some such manner we gain in strength when 
we can so subdue opposing forces as to make 
them contributory to our resources of energy, 
and thus in a sense a part of us. All conquests 
in life come through the ability to dominate 
circumstance. We are not passive beings, to 
become the play of nature's forces about us, but 
free agents, with the power of initiative and the 
will to compel these forces to do our bidding. 

The two conquests which are of supreme sig- 
nificance for us, which we must achieve, or else 
face inevitable failure in life, are the conquest 
of knowledge and the conquest of character. 
Our primal limitation throughout the various 
phases of experience is that of ignorance. 
When we find ourselves in any situation where 
the nature of the forces in opposition to us is 
unknown, such forces are not only an obstacle 
to progress, but may prove a most serious 
danger as well. It is not simply that all effort 
is obviously futile under such circumstances, 
but it is quite likely also to be disastrous, inas- 
much as our very striving may become our 
undoing. But when the nature of the powers 



26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

arrayed against us is adequately discerned, it is 
then possible, not only to combat them suc- 
cessfully, but also to direct them to our obvious 
advantage. 

The life of every individual may be appropri- 
ately represented by an inner circle of knowl- 
edge, placed within a vast outer circle of the 
unknown. Growth, progress, attainment, all 
are possible only when there is an ever-in- 
creasing expansion of this inner circle, tran- 
scending its own limits, and appropriating more 
and more of the outlying region within the area 
of its comprehension and appreciation. 

Undiscovered countries forever lie beyond the 
confines of our understanding, and we feel un- 
der compulsion to push forward the frontiers 
and possess these new lands in the name of 
knowledge. The process of transforming the 
unknown into the known is life, education, de- 
velopment. It is a process essentially of assimi- 
lation. It consists in making knowledge a part 
of our own being; for knowledge is not pri- 
marily a possession, it is a power; it is not a 
stored mind, it is trained skill; it is not a mass 
of information, but a living spirit. In this sense 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 27 

we overcome the world, therefore, when we so 
comprehend the nature of its powers as to make 
them our own, and compel them to obey our 
will. 

We speak of "the world in which we live," 
or of "the world which is about us." These 
phrases, however, are quite misleading, if they 
are taken literally. "The world in which we 
live " is in reality only so much of the great 
world, after all, as lives in us; it is that which 
we understand, and which our knowledge com- 
mands. It would be truer to fact, therefore, if 
we should say that the world is in us, rather 
than we in the world. A million persons live in 
one and the same city, and yet their various pur- 
suits, occupations, and professions form dis- 
tinctly separate worlds of activity and of in- 
terest. Each one makes his own world; for 
knowledge creates as well as discovers. Con- 
sequently one's world is large or small, as one 
chooses. Its boundaries are determined by that 
area which one's intelligence controls, and which 
one has reclaimed from the waste stretches of 
ignorance. Our world is simply the sphere in 
which our skill and proficiency find play, and 



28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

in which we speak with authority. The build- 
ing of such a world is no light task. The pur- 
suit of knowledge is proverbially difficult, and 
yet in the struggle for it we are fighting for a 
kingdom. 

The progress of knowledge is illustrated not 
only in the development of individual capacity 
and efficiency, but as well in the history of 
humanity as a whole. The progress of civiliza- 
tion has been a continuous process of enlarging 
the area of commanding knowledge generation 
after generation. By the toil of the ages, the 
conquests of human thought have been steadily 
maintained. Nature, however, does not re- 
veal her secrets gratuitously; but they must be 
wrested from her. For nature, like the king- 
dom of heaven, suffereth violence, and the vio- 
lent take it by force. Man has invaded nature 
from many sides, and has established over 
every conquered region his sovereign control. 
Even that which lies beyond the range of his 
observation must sooner or later surrender to 
the bold attack or patient siege of his subduing 
thought. There is a whole universe of super- 
sensible phenomena, a world of the all-per- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 29 

vading ether, a world of magnetic fields and 
electric waves, a world of ultra-violet rays, of 
radio-active forces, of ions and electrons, of 
ideoplasm and entelechies, a world which eye 
has not seen, nor ear heard, but which the 
mind of man has penetrated, and brought under 
its control. Man possesses the earth, and his 
title to it is knowledge. His understanding of 
the laws of nature is a patent of proprietary 
right over the domain of nature. 

However, mere knowledge of itself is not 
power. To convert knowledge into powder there 
must be ceaseless activity, and a wise direction 
of all one's energies. With every effort of will 
which man puts forth to command and human- 
ize his environment, there is an expansion of 
the inner circle of personality as well as that of 
knowledge. Wherever resistance is overcome, 
limitations removed, or difficulties transferred 
into advantages, there is a conquest of char- 
acter, and the growth of a larger soul in the 
process of appropriating to itself a larger world. 
When the circle of life contracts, it is evident 
that the world is encroaching upon the domain 
of personality; but when it expands, we may 



3 o THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

be sure that the power of personality has as- 
serted itself, and is in the way of overcoming 
the world. An eternal warfare is waging be- 
tween the necessity of nature on the one hand, 
and the manifestation of the free spirit of man 
on the other. In this contest man has always 
the advantage, for he wields the weapon of 
thought, against which no foe can prevail. 

In his philosophy of life, Fichte regards the 
material world, the course of its events, its 
routine of universal law, the every-day circum- 
stance and commonplace of experience, as 
merely the stage-setting of the great moral 
drama of life. "Our world," he says, "is the 
sensualized material of our duty. What com- 
pels us to yield belief in the reality of the world 
is a moral force, — the only force that is possible 
for a free being." Every historian is bound to 
regard the world, in a certain sense at least, 
from this Fichtean point of view; for the end 
of history is primarily the display of character, 
and the office of the historian is essentially that 
of a psychologist who deals with human docu- 
ments. All institutions — social, political, and 
religious — represent the objectified will of man. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 31 

They make permanent record of habits, of con- 
troversies and conflicts, of received opinion and 
established procedure. The events of life are 
of slight significance which fail to show the 
good or evil of human nature, its weakness or 
its strength, its noble or ignoble strain. Even 
the work of a man's hands should give some 
evidence of his quality of mind, and disposi- 
tion of heart, some intimation of his purpose 
and desire, of his struggles, of his defeats and 
victories. 

The forces of nature with all the material 
elements of the world subserve therefore the 
ends of a higher order, the moral order, and 
they possess for us a final significance only in 
so far as they directly or indirectly fulfil this 
function. All things have a meaning for us, 
according to their relation to man, and man 
has a meaning according to the position which 
he is able to take, and maintain, amidst the 
obligations and responsibilities of his surround- 
ings. 

For a man's life, however, to have a moral 
significance, the inner circle of power should 
expand in such a manner as to enclose within 



32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

its bounds of control other selves as well as 
other things. The nature of man is such that 
he does not develop normally in solitude; for it 
is indeed true that character is formed in the 
stream of the world. While man has to con- 
tend against the forces of nature and subdue 
them to his will, the supreme test comes when 
the conflict is with human nature, with another 
personality like himself, which stands opposed 
to him, urging equal rights and equal privileges. 
The gospel of self-assertion therefore must be 
tempered by a due consideration of others. 

When we urge the rights of freedom and of 
conscience for ourselves, we are constrained in 
consistency to recognize similar rights for others 
whose wills may clash with ours. The rules of 
the game are made impartially for all comers, 
and not for any individual or for the few. The 
rights of an individual, however particular they 
may be in any specific instance, can be justified 
solely by proving that they rest upon some uni- 
versally valid ground. What I can in justice 
claim for myself, and if necessary should fight 
to maintain, I must in all honor allow even in 
my thoughts to any other human being simi- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 33 

larly situated. Life is not a struggle for ex- 
istence in which one wins necessarily at the 
expense of another's loss, where one survives 
while the remnant is pushed to the wall. This 
is a poor view of life; it is the animal view of 
life; it is anti-social, and inhuman. There is 
no relation between man and man in which 
some reciprocity of advantage may not be se- 
cured, and it is our paramount duty to discover 
the means to this end, and cause it to prevail. 
The most signal victories in life are gained, not 
by conquering others, but conquering for them. 
We overcome, not by excluding our fellow-men 
from the circle of self-realization, but by en- 
larging that circle so as to include others within 
the area of common interests and sympathies. 
To convert an antagonist into an ally is the 
consummate art of diplomacy. To conclude a 
wise treaty between two nations upon terms of 
mutual benefit is of greater service to one's 
country than winning a battle, or sinking an 
enemy's fleet. The supreme victory is that 
which can be shared. In human affairs the 
conquests of co-operation alone are worthy. 
Through them the individual creates for him- 



34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 

self an empire of power whose boundaries are 
determined solely by the number of lives which 
are brought within the range of his care and 
concern. One who is conscious that he holds 
his power in trust will not be likely to use it 
arbitrarily, or tyrannically, but with justice to 
all, and to the one end, — that of the common 
good. 

The relations of life approach the normal as 
individual progress is identified with some form 
of social welfare, and the prosperity of one be- 
comes the good fortune of the many. When 
the conditions of society, however, tend to array 
man against man, class against class, and life 
becomes a veritable struggle for existence, then 
all co-operative endeavor must cease, which 
means always an abnormal state of human re- 
lations, and the deterioration of social and na- 
tional life. 

In the Germany of Fichte's age, foreign in- 
vasion and oppression had restricted the free 
spirit of high endeavor, and had discouraged 
all effort save that of the bare preserving of 
one's existence. Fichte felt that under such 
conditions progress either of the individual or 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPPOSITION 35 

of the nation was wholly out of the question; 
that co-operative effort would be unavailing, 
and striving for individual advantage would be 
ignoble. 

These sentiments he expressed to his class at 
the close of a lecture one memorable day in the 
year 18 13. He spoke to them with a grim fer- 
vor concerning the impending danger to their 
country in the presence of an invading army, 
and the patriot's duty to respond to the call of 
need; then he concluded his appeal with these 
ringing words, which proved to be his valedic- 
tory to his students, and to the German people: 
''This course of lectures will be suspended un- 
til the end of this campaign. We will resume 
them in a free country or die in the attempt to 
recover her freedom." 

Such was the spirit of one whose philosophy 
of life is most strikingly illustrated in his pro- 
found conviction that "a nation becomes a 
nation through common struggle/' 



Ill 

THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

"DECAUSE this is a practical age, and also 
pre-eminently an age of extensive investi- 
gation, it might seem that the chief incentive 
to research should be the possibility of adding 
to the store of practical knowledge, and thereby 
increasing the general efficiency of human en- 
deavor. But, as we read the history of scientific 
discovery, from the first strivings of primitive 
thought to the present time, we are impressed 
with the fact that utility is not always the 
mother of invention. 

This is the paradox which confronts us 
throughout the whole course of the develop- 
ment of scientific thought: — If man questions 
nature for the purpose merely of wresting those 
secrets which shall minister directly to his 
needs or comfort, he fails to attain his end, 
or he attains it only in a meagre way; but if, 
on the contrary, he goes to nature with a desire 
to know her secrets for their own sake, the 

36 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 37 

revelation often brings with it a wealth of 
knowledge which, in turn, admits of untold 
applications as regards the practical conven- 
iences of life. If utility is the sole incentive 
to research, the results will range on a lower 
level; if, however, utility is forgotten in the 
passion to get at the heart of things for their 
own sake, it sometimes surprises us upon the 
way. And the reason of this is obvious; for 
utility, in all practical relations, results from the 
application of certain underlying principles to 
the concrete problems of life. The more cen- 
tral and comprehensive the principle, the wider 
will be its scope of practical application. The 
principles most fertile in products of utility are 
often most deeply hidden. They lie at the cen- 
tre of things; it is only the most searching in- 
quiry which will disclose them. With utility as 
the sole guide to research, the mind naturally 
ranges over the surface of things. The more 
profound levels seem far removed from practi- 
cal considerations and results. 

The practical, however simple it may be, is 
always the embodiment of some theory. The 
telephone, the incandescent light, the electric 



38 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

car — these are simply the concrete expression 
of a great electro-magnetic theory. The bridge 
swinging free and secure over the stream, self- 
supported by the exact calculation of its stress 
and strain, is merely a set of mechanical laws 
objectified. If you start in your research with 
the sole object of solving a specific problem of 
practical significance merely, the result, if suc- 
cessful, is limited in all probability to the special 
end in view; on the other hand, if you set 
yourself the larger problem of investigating cer- 
tain phenomena which have peculiarly attracted 
your interest for the purpose of discovering 
their nature and understanding their laws, then 
the revelation of a comprehensive principle 
carries with it a whole world of possibilities. 
While a principle is one, it comprehends the 
many; for it admits of a multiplicity of appli- 
cation which knows no limit. Nature thus sets 
a premium upon the study of her mysteries for 
their own sake. 

There is such a thing as disinterested knowl- 
edge as well as disinterested benevolence. There 
is a scorn of consequence in the intellectual world 
as well as in the moral which tends in like man- 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 39 

ner to provoke unhesitating approval and ad- 
miration. There is a persistent spirit in the 
pursuit of truth, which is dissatisfied as long as 
there are any unexplored remainders of knowl- 
edge. When the challenge of the unknown is 
once heard, there is a restlessness which is im- 
patient of ignorance, a natural impulse to seek 
the reason of things, an instinctive curiosity 
which is not content merely to see, but which 
must also understand, and which is a perpetual 
spur to perseverance through all the exactions 
of laborious research. Whenever there is this 
inner constraint, there is a largess of spirit 
which has no thought of placing a patent upon 
the output of its brain. The glow of discovery 
is a sufficient reward, to which nothing can be 
added save the satisfaction that others share it. 
It has been urged, however, that the natural 
origin of knowledge is to be traced to the effort 
which is put forth in order to satisfy some felt 
need. With the conscious and pressing neces- 
sities of hunting and fishing, of warfare, of 
cooking, of domicile and of raiment, man was 
quick to invent the first crude tools and weap- 
ons, — a covering for his body, a roof over his 



4 o THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

head, also utensils in which he might prepare 
his food and which would prove indestructible 
when exposed to fire. Later, the pursuits of 
agriculture and the early beginnings of the arts 
of commerce and manufacture gave rise to 
implements and machines representing an in- 
finite variety of inventive skill. It is, however, 
a primitive age wherein knowledge arises solely 
in response to the demand of utility. Truly, 
a higher stage of civilization is reached where 
there exists a class, however small, which is 
able to devote its time and energies to the pur- 
suit of truth for its own sake. Such a body of 
men has been styled the "leisure class." It is 
a leisure not merely from manual labor and 
commercial pursuits, but it is above every 
other thing a leisure from the servitude of 
utility. Such was the class of philosophers and 
mathematicians in the early history of Greece. 
Such is the scholarly class in every age, provided 
the appellation of "scholarly" is justly merited. 
The scholar, in his devotion to his subject, in 
his consecration to the high vocation which he 
follows, must be one who is emancipated from 
the domination of the utility idea. Then only 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 41 

is he a free man in the kingdom of knowledge. 
Bacon has said that the end of all scientific 
investigation is "the gathering of fruit " — that 
is, the turning of all discovery to some practical 
account. The true produce of the scholar's 
brain, however, is of the nature of seed rather 
than of fruit, and that of incalculable variety 
and possibility. The utilitarian strain which 
was the blemish of Bacon's character was like- 
wise the defect of his scientific method. 

Although the investigator may not have 
sought that which is useful, yet his discoveries 
often admit of a direct practical application to 
the every-day needs and comforts of life; and 
so the practical value, which, throughout the 
whole course of his investigations was never 
sought and never dreamed of, may become 
realized, nevertheless, in full measure. The 
secret of nature once discovered becomes the 
ground of a new form of reasoning; new minds 
busy themselves with the practical problems 
which may be suggested by it. Thus in the 
wake of the discoverers in pure science follow 
the inventors. The men who were the pioneers 
in the field of electricity and magnetism labored 



42 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

with a keen interest born of a constraining love 
of nature, and with no thought of gain save in 
the discovery of that knowledge which is its 
own reward. And yet the work of such minds 
as Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, and Henry opened 
the way to the electric telegraph and the innumer- 
able applications of their electro-magnetic dis- 
coveries, to the benefit of the race and the 
progress of civilization. Also, in our own day, 
the investigations of Hertz in Germany and of 
Thomson in England, incited and sustained by 
an interest purely scientific, have made the sys- 
tem of the wireless telegraphy possible. 

The discoveries of the rays of Lenard, of 
Becquerel, and of Rontgen were the result of 
research which was conducted in a like spirit; 
moreover, they have led to practical applica- 
tions in the field of therapeutics and surgery 
which are of inestimable service; nor is the pos- 
sibility of their further utility by any means ex- 
hausted. The practical value of a truth is often 
a kind of by-product which direct research does 
not reveal. The great science of modern chem- 
istry has been built upon the foundations which 
were laid by the genius of Lavoisier, who 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 43 

brought to his labors a spirit fired by a love of 
nature for her own sake. However, the prac- 
tical output of those labors has modified essen- 
tially every phase of our modern industrial, 
domestic, and commercial life. 

The application of chemical truth to the 
problems of agriculture and physiology, through 
the brilliant work of Liebig, was possible only 
because of the toil of the many whose eyes were 
never upon the goal either of general utility or 
personal reward. In a quaint old writing of 
one of the pioneers in chemistry, Beccher, called 
the "Physica Subterranea," the author speaks 
of chemists as a "strange class of mortals, im- 
pelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their 
pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and 
flame, poisons and poverty." "My kingdom," 
said he, "is not, however, of this world. I 
trust that I have got hold of my pitcher by the 
right handle, the true method of treating this 
study; for the Pseudo-chymists seek gold, but 
the true philosophers, science, which is more 
precious than gold." Such men may be nobly 
doomed to lives of unrequited sacrifice; but 
they leave to their fellows what they themselves 



44 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

never possessed, — the means of increased wealth, 
health, comfort, and power. 

If utility were the sole incentive to research, 
that most admirable of all graces, the patience 
of hope, would often fail; for the practical 
value of knowledge is slow of revelation. 
Knowledge, to be practically available, requires 
in many cases to undergo an aging process. 
The new wine of truth also needs the touch of 
time. The most beneficent ends are often so 
remote that they can be disclosed only after a 
long series of discoveries, which lead up to 
them by a natural sequence, but which afford 
in the process of their unfolding no intimation 
whatsoever of their ultimate utility. When the 
utility is not obvious in the first stages of an 
investigation there is need of a deeper incentive, 
so that research may not be abandoned in a 
moment of discouragement. And discourage- 
ment will come very soon if no evidence of 
practical results is forthcoming. 

It is to be observed, also, that the utility of 
any portion of knowledge depends, in many 
instances, upon its combination with other por- 
tions. Alone, it is barren. It has no utility in 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 45 

itself. But it may contribute certain elements 
which, in collocation with others, make for util- 
ity of singular value. Darwin, in the line of his 
own investigations, has drawn attention to the 
fact that utility in most cases depends upon the 
co-ordination of various elements which are 
separately useless. It frequently happens in 
other fields also that the labors of many minds 
must be brought together in order to produce 
practical results of any real significance and 
value. The solitary toilers may not be able to 
discern any promise of utility in their separate 
labors. Their particular contribution is only a 
fraction, after all; and yet, nevertheless, it may 
prove to be an essential part of a combined 
whole whose resultant effects may possess prac- 
tical value of a high order. The efficiency of 
the methods of physical science and ultimately 
the application of its results to practical affairs 
have been increased incalculably through the 
brilliant speculations in pure mathematics of 
men who knew not the language of utility. 
Others, however, are able to combine their re- 
sults in such a manner as to give a practical turn 
to considerations primarily theoretical. 



46 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

The inventor stands at that point of advantage 
where many lines of discovery converge. The 
several independent results he is able to unite 
and embody in a new machine, a new method, 
or a new process. Many inventions appear as 
the outcome of collaboration; the co-workers 
are not always contemporary; the lapse of 
time alone may serve to efface their memory. 
Seldom known and less often appreciated, they 
nevertheless through their patient efforts con- 
tribute those essential elements of knowledge 
without which the inventor's skill would surely 
fail of success. We are accustomed to think 
of the inventor as commanding the forces of 
nature to do his bidding. He, however, is not 
dealing directly with the forces of nature, but 
rather with the ideas which other men have 
formed of these forces, which they have so in- 
terpreted that they can be made plain and be put 
into words and reduced to the expressions of law 
and formula. The inventor is not merely engaged 
in the task of fitting part to part of a machine; 
he builds with rarer material. He is building an 
idea which is a composite. The elements which 
enter into its texture are the thoughts of men. 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 47 

It is to be noticed also that a mind exclusively 
bent upon the idea of utility necessarily narrows 
the range of the imagination. For it is the 
imagination which pictures to the inner eye of 
the investigator the indefinitely extending sphere 
of the possible, — that region of hypothesis and 
explanation, of underlying cause and controlling 
law. The area of suggestion and experiment is 
thus pushed beyond the actual field of vision. 
But, if utility is the sole end of research, the 
scope of imaginative inquiry is thereby nar- 
rowed. There is no comprehensive sweep of 
the thought, no power of divination, no com- 
pelling fancy. Whatever fails to show a face 
value of utility does not arrest and hold the 
attention. Significant facts and relations are 
overlooked. The by-ways of knowledge are left 
unexplored in the hot pursuit of the immedi- 
ately useful. But where there is absorbed and 
sustained interest in an object of research for 
its own sake, the imagination broods over its 
tasks with a delight and passion which tend to 
provoke the hidden truth. 

In the prevailing tendency in certain quarters 
to direct research according to the lead of 



4 3 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

utility, there is a vicious theory of education 
which is being urged to-day with all the en- 
thusiasm of a new gospel: "Teach the child 
that all knowledge can be disposed to some 
useful end. Cultivate early the habit of look- 
ing for the practical worth of everything that 
he learns, and let the student of later years 
bear constantly in mind that knowledge is 
power." Such is the doctrine of a bread-and- 
butter theory of pedagogy. But why push the 
child out into the current which tends to draw 
every one into its precipitate flow ? In this age 
of materialistic drift, the idea of practical values 
and utility considerations need not be taught, 
nor even mentioned. The fact is, it cannot be 
escaped; its influence is all-pervading, inevi- 
table. While it is undoubtedly true that the 
student should be interested in the subject which 
he is pursuing, let us not, however, confuse as 
some have done the two radically distinct ideas, 
of an interest in a subject for its own sake, and 
an interest in the practical utility which it may 
possess. It is possible, and indeed absolutely 
essential in my opinion, that the student's 
interest should be stimulated directly by the 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 49 

rich material which certain subjects present; 
and so the thought be withdrawn, to some ex- 
tent at least, from the exclusive consideration 
of present or future application of the knowl- 
edge which he seeks to the practical affairs 
of life. 

It is true that knowledge is power; but this 
should not be held out continually to the student 
as an alluring bait. Knowledge can compel 
homage and devotion without stooping to offer 
a bribe, or to cry her wares in the street. There 
are, moreover, certain indirect uses of knowledge 
which can never be consciously in the thought 
of student or teacher during the actual process 
of instruction. They are too subtle, too far- 
reaching in their effects, too complex, too cu- 
mulative for any one to define and name, and put 
into the form of a maxim or rule. They can- 
not be specified and pointed to as the obvious 
rewards of industry in the pursuit of truth. 
They constitute not so much the results which 
knowledge can attain as the atmosphere which 
knowledge permanently creates — the finer flavor 
of thought, the sound reason, the true judg- 
ment, and the sane appreciation, which are the 



50 THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 

marks of a richly stored and accurately trained 
mind. He who lacks in these particulars fails 
to realize the full measure of his possibilities. 
And yet it often happens, strangely enough, 
that this added power in a man's life is missed 
simply on account of his restricted inter- 
ests, and his impatient haste to acquire only 
that kind of knowledge which may seem to 
him at the time to be of some obvious use 
and advantage in the efficient direction of his 
energies. 

This, then, is the paradox of knowledge that 
he who regards knowledge as his servant is 
never completely master of it; but whoever re- 
gards himself as the servant of knowledge, he 
alone is master in the world of thought. There 
can be no higher standard of intellectual attain- 
ment, or a more alluring reward of research 
than that which is expressed by the old Greek 
author, Isocrates, in his appreciation of Athens 
and the part which she has played in the his- 
tory of thought: "So far hath our city passed 
beyond the rest of men, both in thought and 
speech, that her disciples are become their teach- 
ers; and she hath made the name of the Greeks 



THE PARADOX OF RESEARCH 51 

seem no longer to be the name of a race, but 
of knowledge. They rather are to be called 
Greeks who share our training than they who 
share our descent." 



IV 
ON RESPONSIBILITY 

'T^HERE is much loose and confused thinking 
about the nature of responsibility. Not 
only are there innumerable instances of persons 
holding positions of trust who are evading evi- 
dent responsibilities, but also more particularly, 
of those who would seek to justify themselves in 
such a course. The latter are like the figures in 
Nast's famous cartoon of the Tweed Ring, who 
are all standing in a circle, and each one point- 
ing aside with his thumb to his neighbor as the 
responsible person. It is the old story of the 
other man. There are many circumstances in 
life where it is convenient to shift the respon- 
sibility upon some one else; and whenever one 
sets himself to defend a convenient course of 
action, he does not always see straight and think 
clear. Even though he may succeed in con- 
vincing himself, nevertheless if in this process 
there is any element of self-deception, he is 

perilously near the danger line. 

52 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 53 

There are no fallacies so subtle as those 
which insinuate themselves into our reasoning 
at a time when our interests are involved. To 
play the role of judge and of special pleader at 
one and the same time is an impossible task. 
Therefore when we seek to free ourselves from 
the burden of responsibility in any situation, we 
must be peculiarly on guard, that we do not 
allow ourselves to become ensnared in the toils 
of those artificial distinctions and plausible ex- 
planations which when stripped of their verbal 
dress appear in their nakedness as contemptible 
subterfuges. 

One of these convenient ideas which serve as 
a kind of natural anaesthetic to conscience is the 
belief that any responsibility which is divided is 
thereby lessened. Responsibility, however, can 
never be dissipated by diffusion. The directc! 
of a corporation may content himself with the 
comforting thought that where many are jointlv 
responsible, his share of the common obligation 
after all cannot be regarded as very serious. 
And in this idea there lies a very fundamental 
error. For responsibility is by its nature some- 
thing intensive and not extensive. It can be 



54 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

divided among many, but it is not thereby di- 
minished in degree. When by the ordinary proc- 
esses of arithmetical division, however, one 
number is divided by another, the result is only 
a small part of the original amount. It is al- 
ways a lessening process. But the idea of re- 
sponsibility cannot be expressed in any such 
quantitative terms. Dividends can be divided 
into separate parts, but not responsibility. Re- 
sponsibility can never be conceived in the light 
of a magnitude. It belongs to the class of things 
which, when divided, each part is equal to the 
whole. 

Responsibility in this respect is like pleasure 
which, when shared, is not lessened, but the 
rather increased, as Bacon long ago pointed out. 
The same quality, also, we find in the rewards of 
honor, or of fame it may be, which come to the 
many who have served in a common cause and 
rejoice in a common victory. Thus the glory of 
the whole is each one's share. It can be divided 
among many without loss. So, also, the appre- 
ciation of beauty in nature or in art shows no 
diminishing returns, although the number who 
experience the joy of it may be increased with- 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 55 

out limit. This, also, is the characteristic feature 
of responsibility. Parents share the respon- 
sibility of their children, but the complete re- 
sponsibility and no half measure of it rests upon 
each. The director of a bank or an insurance 
company shares the responsibility of his position 
with his colleagues on the same board; but the 
shared responsibility is not a per capitum por- 
tion, but the whole. 

This is not a new doctrine; it comes to us 
with an immemorial sanction. But it seems 
to have been forgotten in recent years. "My 
share of the responsibility is but slight," is a 
common phrase which may be heard on all 
sides at the present day. If one would thus 
seek to minimize his sense of obligation as re- 
gards that which may be placed in his keeping 
as a trust, he should not forget that his share 
of responsibility is not a part, but the whole, 
undiminished and untransferable. He may 
have others associated with him, it is true, but 
his individual responsibility cannot be shifted 
upon them. He must meet it in the full rigor 
of its demands, and regard himself as though 
alone in the discharge of his duties. 



56 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

There is also the fallacy of the delegated 
responsibility. It is impossible for one at the 
head of large business interests, for instance, 
to give his personal attention to every minute 
detail. He finds himself naturally compelled 
to delegate much of the work of supervision 
and of administration to others who act in the 
capacity of his deputies. Otherwise the busi- 
ness of life would be impossible. This is in- 
deed a commonplace of every-day business 
routine. But because some one else may as- 
sume the responsibility, he who deputizes it is 
not wholly relieved of it. He passes on the 
duty of actually performing some specific work, 
and yet the obligation still rests with him not 
to do the task, it is true, but at least to see that 
it is done. We cannot afford to ignore the 
common-law judgment hat the act of the agent 
is the act of the principal. We cannot take it 
for granted that the mere transfer of respon- 
sibility to another assures a satisfactory dis- 
charge of all the duties which it involves. We 
do not dare to shut our eyes to the fact as to 
whether such duties are fulfilled or not, on the 
ground that the responsibility now rests upon 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 57 

another and not upon ourselves. It is his 
responsibility, but it is also ours. A person 
who is at the head of a large business enterprise 
cannot be omnipresent or omniscient; but he 
is responsible for the kind of men who are his 
partners in responsibility, and also for the 
atmosphere which pervades his business, for 
the general morale of the service, for the dis- 
cipline that is enforced, for the prevailing 
policy and method pursued, and for the spirit 
and tone which characterize all departments, 
however various they may be. Division of 
labor is not a dissipation of responsibility. He 
who is responsible for a particular task is re- 
lieved of that responsibility only when there is 
evidence that the given work has been done. 
The head of a corporation should devise cer- 
tain methods by which such evidence can be 
regularly forthcoming, so that when any cog in 
any wheel may chance to slip, the fact may be 
at once apparent at the central seat of respon- 
sibility. 

There is, of course, such a thing as a serial 
responsibility, as I would style it, that is, where 
a number of persons in turn assume the re- 



58 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

sponsibility for a certain task, each contributing 
his share to its accomplishment, and then pass 
on the full responsibility to some other. This 
is illustrated in the sending of a registered 
package. Each one in the series does his part 
in the process of forwarding it, and receives a 
signed acknowledgment that another has re- 
lieved him of his particular duty and of all 
responsibility connected with it. The ordinary 
business of life, however, cannot always be so 
nicely adjusted. Responsibility appears more 
often in an indefinite and diffused form, in 
which many persons are involved, and no one 
at any time carries the full burden alone. 
There is no way of escaping responsibility of 
this kind as long as we remain within the area 
of its pervading power. We dare not hang 
about the outer edge of this region, hoping to 
reap the possible rewards, and yet think to 
evade all blame or loss in the event of untoward 
results. There are many who thus endeavor 
to hold their course along some such imaginary 
line, so that they may shrewdly keep within it 
to share the honor or dividends which may 
accrue, and yet be able to swerve to the outer 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 59 

side of it whenever the area within may become 
the storm-centre of indignant protest and re- 
crimination. 

Again it is often urged that we are in a 
measure relieved of the responsibility of an act, 
when such an act is a customary procedure in 
the business, professional, or social circles in 
which we may happen to move. " Everybody 
does it," it is said, "it is the usual practice; 
then why should I be overscrupulous concerning 
that which general usage has sanctioned as per- 
missible ? " Such is the argument. And yet 
responsibility at the last analysis must be rec- 
ognized as an individual matter. No man's 
responsibility can be judged in the light of 
another's. Custom does not make right. The 
low level which the morale of a guild or of a 
profession sometimes reaches is due to this very 
fact, that no individual sees his peculiar re- 
sponsibility in such a light that he is willing to 
break the bond of custom by protest or by 
practice. It is not easy to be independent 
under such circumstances, but that does not 
make it any the less imperative. Responsi- 
bility is not lessened merely because it may 



60 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

entail extraordinary courage and sacrifice. We 
do not justify ourselves in the failure to meet 
evident obligations by the plea that circum- 
stances and conditions are too much for us to 
cope with. The convenient, the comfortable, 
and the easy-going are not the symptoms which 
usually form the diagnosis of responsibility. 

There is another fallacy which many fall into 
of securing freedom from responsibility by the 
assumption of a convenient ignorance. A can- 
didate, for instance, may not choose to know 
the detail of method and of policy pursued by a 
campaign committee in charge of his interests. 
The members of the committee in turn deem it 
wise to have him kept in ignorance. It is gen- 
erally understood that whatever happens, he 
is to know nothing about it. The comforting 
theory is that no responsibility can attach to a 
person concerning an act of which he is igno- 
rant. This is doubtless true, provided he is not 
purposely ignorant. A person may not be held 
responsible for failure to see some obvious cir- 
cumstance when his eyes are shut; but he is 
responsible for his eyes being shut when they 
ought to be open. 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 61 

There are men who know that certain results 
cannot possibly be accomplished without cer- 
tain definite means being used, and yet con- 
sent weakly to profit by these results on the 
ground that they do not know explicitly the 
character of the means used to attain them. It 
is a lame excuse. We are responsible not only 
for that which we see and hear, but also for 
that which may be implied in the things seen 
and heard, and which we are compelled to 
recognize as the necessary consequence of them. 
It is not merely the actual situation in which we 
find ourselves, but also the logic of such situa- 
tions that must be interpreted and judged by us 
as to the measure of our responsibility for them. 
It must be remembered that the very ground of 
our responsibility is the presupposition that we 
are in complete possession of our reason. How 
absurd therefore to narrow the range of respon- 
sibility by excluding the obvious inferences 
which the reason of any man of ordinary intel- 
ligence must surely recognize. If a campaign 
committee, for instance, expends large sums of 
money, it stands to reason that the one in whose 
interests it has been raised must know that 



62 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

revenues are not created by magic. Merely to 
choose not to know is to ignore a definite re- 
sponsibility and thereby assume an indefinite 
one. It is like signing a blank check to an 
unknown order and for an unknown amount. 
The man who would rather not know what his 
friends are doing in his behalf should be held 
to strict account for his voluntary ignorance. 
No one can afford to have things done for him 
which he would scorn to do or be afraid to do 
himself. 

There is also a very common feeling that any 
one may repudiate all responsibility in a given 
situation, if he will only declare forcibly and 
loudly enough that he does not regard himself 
as in the least responsible for the same. He 
may insist that he will wash his hands of the 
whole matter; but there are certain stains that 
cannot be thus removed. The hands may be 
washed; but they may not be made clean by 
the process. There is a ceremonial purity 
which does not penetrate beneath the surface. 
How often men justify themselves, when 
feebly yielding to the prevailing opinion of the 
many associated with them in some position of 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 63 

trust, by the ready excuse that after all the 
majority must rule. It is true that the major- 
ity must rule; but it is equally true that the mi- 
nority often must fight. A mere verbal protest 
followed by a quiet acquiescence is not sufficient 
when honor or honesty is the issue. An un- 
compromising attitude of opposition may have 
to be maintained until the court of last appeal 
is reached; that court may be a board of di- 
rectors, or the stockholders, or public opinion, 
or in the regular course of legal procedure even 
the Supreme Court of the United States itself. 
Responsibility often demands a fight to the fin- 
ish. In that case, compromise is cowardly. 

We are responsible for our silence, for our 
inertia, for our ignorance, for our indifference — 
in short, for all those negative qualities which 
commonly constitute the " dummy" directors — 
those inconsequent personages who would enjoy 
the honor and the perquisites of their office with- 
out allowing themselves to be unduly burdened 
with its duties and cares. The president of a 
corporation or a superintendent does not assume 
the responsibility vested in its board of directors; 
he merely represents that responsibility. And 



64 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

when they would implicitly assign all sense of 
their personal obligations to his keeping, they 
not only put themselves in a position to be easily 
fooled, but actually offer a ready temptation to 
him to fool them. They are thus doubly rep- 
rehensible; for the neglect of duty on the one 
hand, and on the other for extending a virtual 
invitation for some one to use them as tools for 
unlawful ends. Not only the wreck of a busi- 
ness, but the wreck of a human being must be 
laid at their door, who by a splendid capacity 
for negligence do thus expose another to the 
play of the most subtle temptations which can 
be conceived. 

There is also the mistaken notion that we 
may escape certain responsibilities simply by not 
assuming them. There are some obligations, 
however, which we do not dare to refuse, and 
which indeed it is not possible to refuse. We 
have no choice in the matter. We cannot say 
in truth that we have no responsibility, for in- 
stance, for the general decency and good order 
of the community in which we live merely be- 
cause we have chosen to keep out of the village 
politics, and therefore, not being on the bor- 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 65 

ough council or the board of health, it is none 
of our business if the laws of nature, of man, or 
of God are violated. It must be remembered 
that responsibilities of such a kind are not 
assumed by definite choice, but belong to us 
whether we will or not. Certain responsibili- 
ties we do not choose; they choose us. If at 
times they seem to us vague and indefinite, it 
becomes our duty to make them definite through 
some effort on our part. We are held to ac- 
count not merely for doing the obvious duty 
that circumstance may urge upon us, but also 
for creating the circumstance which may give 
rise to a wholly new set of duties. We are not 
only responsible for lending our service to the 
cause which has a rightful claim upon us, but 
also we may be responsible for the establishment 
of a cause to serve. We are responsible for 
the very fact, if indeed it be a fact, that our re- 
sponsibilities in life are so few and so slight. 
If we choose to carry the lighter burden, it is 
not a matter of felicitation, but one for our most 
serious personal concern; for an irresponsible 
person is always defective in some respect, either 
in body, mind or character. 



66 ON RESPONSIBILITY 

There are those moreover who imagine that 
in certain relations of life there can be devised 
some natural substitute for the sense of respon- 
sibility. It is possible, of course, to establish a 
set of automatic checks upon an employee's 
activities of such a nature as to reduce his per- 
sonal responsibility to a minimum. Any fail- 
ure in the performance of his duties is at once 
mechanically discovered by the various systems 
of time-clocks, bell-punches, cash registers, and 
the like. This is very well in all cases where 
the labor is that of simple routine. Mechanical 
activity can be checked by a mechanical device. 
Not so, however, as regards those duties which 
demand a higher order of capacity — such as 
that of sound judgment, a fine sense of dis- 
crimination, and the power of resourceful initia- 
tive. In all such matters there can be no sub- 
stitute for the responsible personality. Man 
is a responsible being because of this very ele- 
ment of free activity in his nature which no 
mechanical contrivance, however ingenious, can 
ever gauge. We are all so completely depend- 
ent upon the integrity, fidelity, and efficiency of 
our fellow-men in the more complex relations of 



ON RESPONSIBILITY 67 

life that we must at times, and often the most 
critical, trust them implicitly. We do not pro- 
ceed far in any undertaking without being 
aware that we are holding another responsible, 
or that some one is holding us responsible for 
those inevitable duties which arise out of the 
relations of man to man the world over. If a 
man would escape all responsibility he must 
place himself wholly outside of the relations of 
life, for life is responsibility. As we have seen, 
responsibility remains with us even though we 
may ask others to assume it; we share it with 
others, but our portion is the same; when we 
turn our backs upon it, we find it still facing us; 
we flee from it, and however far it may be, we 
behold it waiting for us at the journey's end. 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

npHERE is a common fallacy which is due 
to a misapprehension of that familiar 
axiom, "the whole equals the sum of its parts." 
We imagine that this is true in every sphere 
of experience, but it is not. If our thought is 
concerned with magnitude, lines, or surfaces, 
and if it is a matter of indifference as to the 
order in which one relates the separate parts, 
then the simple axiom holds; but otherwise 
we run into all kinds of error and absurdities. 
A watch ceases to be a watch when you have 
merely the separate parts before you. The 
sum of them will not mark the minutes and 
hours. The collection of parts is not the watch. 
For no chance arrangement of parts can pro- 
duce a mechanism; it is not the sum, but the 
ordered connection of the parts which makes 
the watch, the engine, or the machine. And, 
in the case of an organism whose parts are 
held together and co-ordinated by the mysteri- 
ous bond of life, can we say the whole is equal 

68 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 69 

to the sum of its parts ? Try the experiment; 
analyze the plant, dissect the animal, and then 
essay a summation of the parts. We soon dis- 
cover that it is an irreversible process. Either 
dissection kills that which it investigates, or 
that which it investigates is dead already. A 
living whole is never discovered by a mere put- 
ting together of its parts. Goethe long ago 
exposed this folly: 

" Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben 
Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben, 
Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, 
Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band." 

The end of all knowledge is the discovery 
of this "vital bond," the grasping in a multi- 
plicity of details the one idea which is the living 
principle of their connection. The discovery 
of facts which are not yet put together to form 
a whole is not knowledge. It is preliminary to 
knowledge; but to know means to interpret 
the accumulated facts, and to interpret them 
is to relate them to some significant whole. 
There are many to-day who insist that the 
investigator in the natural sciences, in political 



7 o THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

economy, in psychology, should be solely a com- 
piler of facts, and that the man of theory should 
give way before the man of facts; for the fact 
is certain, the theory is uncertain, the fact is 
born of reality, the theory is spun out of mind. 
But every fact, it must be remembered, illus- 
trates some theory, of which it is a particular 
instance. To understand a fact, there must be 
an appreciation of its relation to the universal 
truth which it reveals, and with which it is 
united by its unseen but "vital bond/ 5 The 
isolated fact, indeed, apart from its setting, has 
no meaning. The hand severed from the body 
is no longer a hand. The brain in the jar of 
alcohol is not a brain; it was once the centre 
of thought and feeling; it is now only a speci- 
men; as a part of the organism it was every- 
thing, as a whole in itself it is nothing. Much 
exact scholarship gains the letter but loses the 
spirit of knowledge, because, while collecting 
the facts, it fails to comprehend how they hang 
together, or what they mean in the light of a 
larger whole. 

On the other hand, if one part, however in- 
significant, be rightly interpreted, it will dis- 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 71 

cover the whole. One drop in the test-tube, a 
single act of disloyalty in a friend, a glance of 
the eye, a gesture, a word too much or a word 
too little, and the whole story is told. The 
astronomer only needs to see how the arc 
begins to round in order to construct the com- 
plete orbit. The theory of reasoning rests 
upon this simple principle, that things are so 
bound together that a part may disclose the 
whole, as, when one picks up a single link, the 
entire chain comes with it. The prophet, for 
instance, is not one who in some mysterious 
manner sees into the future. It is the present 
into which the eyes of the seer must penetrate. 
He predicts the future only so far as it is 
wrapped up in the present. As Leibniz once 
said, " Every present is big with the future and 
laden with the past." The veil is not between 
us and the future; it is between us and the 
present. We, dull of vision, fail to read the 
signs of the times. The parts we see, but we 
are not able to divine the whole. 

So also in any group of men, in a clan, a 
tribe, a society, in church or in state, the whole 
is more than the sum of its parts. The parts 



72 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

may be seen, they may be counted. We find 
them in registers, in rosters, in tables of census 
statistics, and yet the communal spirit which 
makes for unity and solidarity is unseen. It is 
the esprit de corps, without which the body dies 
and returns to its elemental parts. And, even 
within the still larger range which embraces 
the circle of mankind in general, the several 
parts are bound together as members one of 
another, because they are united in a common 
ancestry and a common destiny, a common weal 
or woe. The spirit of humanity makes all one. 
It has often been said that the great man, 
the genius or the hero, lifts himself above the 
ordinary level of mankind, and that he in no 
sense belongs to the mass, but is as one dwell- 
ing apart, self-sufficient, fulfilling the law of 
his own being. But the great man, if truly 
great, belongs in a peculiar manner to his day 
and generation; if not, there is no arena 
wherein his powers may find a natural man- 
ifestation. No man attains a place in the 
world's history save through the part which he 
plays among his contemporaries and in his own 
setting. He must have the great heart and the 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 73 

great mind himself, and yet his following must, 
in some measure at least, possess the elements 
of greatness. No general could ever prove his 
greatness with a battalion of cowards. The 
great prophet must gather about him those who 
have not bowed the knee to Baal; or who 
would hear his message ? Luther had the Prot- 
estants, Cromwell the Puritans, Napoleon his 
Imperial Guard, Washington the American 
patriots. The scholar writes for scholars; the 
man of letters for those who possess the respon- 
sive mind and taste. Behind the great masters 
of English there has ever been that great body 
of their fellows who 

" Speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held." 

There is still another fallacy which may be 
called the genetic fallacy — the mistaken idea 
that, if we can only trace a thing back to the 
part which forms its origin, we shall there, in 
that initial stage, find its complete explanation. 
This is the day in which the method of evolu- 
tion prevails throughout every field of serious 



74 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

investigation. Back to beginnings ! This is the 
cry on all sides, whether the investigation be 
that of an animal, of a religion, or of a form 
of government. The original part, it is urged, 
is the key to all subsequent processes of de- 
velopment. But the original part by itself is 
never self-illuminating. Even though in our 
researches we have succeeded in discovering it, 
we are at a loss to interpret its significance. 
For much appears in any initial stage which, 
in the process of development, completely dis- 
appears; and much lies concealed which, nev- 
ertheless, contains the promise and potency 
of all that is to be. It is of the nature of 
a cause to hide itself. In this respect it re- 
sembles the Deity — because it too is creative. 
The complete nature of a cause can be re- 
vealed only through the whole course of the proc- 
ess of development which proceeds from it. If 
every cause manifested itself fully in its earlier 
stages, then all knowledge would be attained 
by simple observation, and it would be super- 
ficial at that; but it is not. You may ask, what 
is the nature of the seed which I chance to 
hold in my hand ? I do not know; but I can 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 75 

discover it readily enough. Sow the seed in 
the earth, let it be warmed by the sun and wet 
by the rain, let it grow in the light and in the 
night, then will come a revelation of its nature 
in fruit and flower. The seed does not explain 
the plant; rather the plant explains the seed. 

No more is man satisfied with that account 
of his nature which refers him to his mere 
beginnings, and traces his line of descent to 
certain "Simian ancestors of arboreal habit "; 
or, to go a stage further in this regress, to the 
primal elements to which his organism may be 
reduced, the oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, car- 
bon, and what not, of his ultimate origin. Is 
man, as we know him, as we know ourselves, 
satisfactorily explained by such beginnings ? 
It must not be overlooked that, in that ele- 
mental stage, there must have been a potential 
factor which is not in any one of the original 
parts but pervades them all, which elevates the 
dust whence man comes and hallows it, which 
transforms the beast into the savage and the 
savage into the civilized man. Call it reason, 
or spirit, or soul, what you will; it will never be 
revealed at the beginnings of the process of evo- 



76 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

lution, but at its consummation. Explanation 
does not look backward to origins, but forward 
to the final results of the unfolding process. 
The process of development is a process of rev- 
elation, but its beginnings always conceal more 
than they reveal. We must all concede what 
Darwin pointedly calls to our attention, as 
though in our pride we needed constantly to 
be reminded of it, that "man still bears in his 
bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly 
origin." Although we may have come from a 
stock which we share in common with the ape, 
nevertheless we have come a long way; and 
although we have risen from the dust of the 
earth, and to that dust we return, yet the signifi- 
cant fact remains, that we have risen, and that 
for the brief space at least while thought holds 
sway over our lives we decline to be confused 
with this dust under our feet, or with the animal 
which follows to heel, or which mimics our bod- 
ily movements and gestures as he chatters to us 
from his cage. 

Mr. Spencer finds the origin of religion in the 
early superstition of primitive man, the belief in 
ghosts, the disembodied spirits of heroes, feared, 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 77 

reverenced, and finally worshipped, appeased by 
sacrifice, praised in song, in dance, and prayer. 
But, here again, religion also is to be judged 
not by what it once was, but by what it has 
become and by what it promises to be. The 
early superstition does not explain the evolution 
of the religious idea in its long course of de- 
velopment through the ages, but the evolution 
of religion is rather the development of purer 
forms out of earlier perverted forms; it is the 
dying of superstition as the seed dies in the 
earth, generating that which is potentially in 
it, separating the essential from the unessential, 
the true from the false, a revelation of the inner 
significance behind the symbols of religion, of 
the inner spirit behind its external forms. 

When we trace the course of any series of 
events backward to their starting-point, we un- 
consciously interpret the initial stage in the 
light of all we have gathered by the way in our 
return to it, and thus we are apt to attribute 
to the first term of a series a significance which 
is not its own. As in a mathematical series, so 
in any series of events, the first term has no 
meaning whatsoever unless we know also the 



78 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

law of the series, how the subsequent terms are 
related to the first and to each other in the 
manner of their formation. For this reason, 
we say that no history can be written by a con- 
temporary. The current events show their sur- 
face significance only. That which is wrapped 
up in them will be revealed in time, and he 
alone who can read the course of their subse- 
quent development is qualified to judge them 
critically. 

There is another error of judgment to which 
we are all liable; it is the fallacy of the half 
truth. This is a substitution of a part for the 
whole, and resting satisfied with it because it is 
thought to be the whole. Such a satisfaction 
proceeds usually from self-deception. It sig- 
nifies a false mental attitude; and the disas- 
trous consequence of such a deception is this, 
that one is content with a fancied attainment 
when he should be restless with the fever of 
the chase. The disaster imminent in such a 
situation is not merely that the half truth is 
substituted for the whole, but that further in- 
quiry is suspended, and that which should be 
a transition stage on the way of knowledge is 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 79 

complacently regarded as the journey's end. 
Thus we have partisanship in politics, bigotry 
in religion, the orthodoxy which regards every 
differing opinion as heterodoxy, the idealism 
that is unreal, and the realism which discovers 
no ideal, the egoism which recognizes no other, 
and the altruism which dissipates itself in ser- 
vice of others at the expense of the obligation 
owing to self. How easily we overlook that 
fundamental law both of knowledge and of life, 
the law of complementary adjustment, the fit- 
ting of the half truth to its other half, so that a 
balanced whole is the result. We gaze so obsti- 
nately at the one side of the shield that a shift- 
ing of the point of view never suggests itself. 
"The tragedy of though t," says Hegel, "is not 
the conflict of truth with error, but of truth 
with truth." 

How, then, is one to know that the whole 
truth which he thinks he possesses is but the 
half truth and not really the whole ? Such a 
discovery comes only to him who has an open 
mind and a spirit of tolerance. The open mind 
is ever seeking a new point of view; the tolerant 
spirit is ever striving to put itsef in a sympa- 



8o THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

thetic attitude to opposing opinions, and this not 
after the manner of a weak concession, but in the 
interests of a critical inquiry after truth. For 
suppose, upon a candid examination of an opin- 
ion which is opposed to the one we hold, we find 
something which we are constrained to ac- 
knowledge as true, then are we not warranted in 
concluding that it is the very portion of truth 
which our opinion lacks and which is its natural 
complement? The adjustment of the one to 
the other must surely lead us to a deeper appre- 
ciation of the truth in its entirety. All progress 
in knowledge has been brought about by some 
such process as this — a series of successive ad- 
justments arising out of conflicting opinions. 
How many controversies in religion, in politics, 
or in philosophy have resulted in the revela- 
tion of a larger truth than either side alone had 
maintained. The moment any controversy ap- 
pears to be so one-sided that the truth is wholly 
with the one and error is wholly with the other, 
our interest in it immediately ceases. It is in 
clash of opinion that truth is provoked; and it 
may well happen that the one who traverses 
our convictions may be not so much an an- 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 81 

tagonist as a collaborator in the field of 
research. 

Moreover in a philosophy of life which is cal- 
culated to produce any deep and permanent sat- 
isfaction, one must learn to see things as a 
whole, and not in the isolation of their detached 
parts. Life has many compensations which 
the whole story reveals, but which the sepa- 
rate incidents here and there not only tend to 
conceal but actually to contradict. It is only 
when the case is all in that a true verdict is 
possible. Then it is that we come to see that 
things which are different need not be neces- 
sarily opposed. When immediate observation 
fails to disclose the complementary part, we 
grow impatient, and although resolute in action 
we nevertheless become cynical in spirit. It is 
well to remember, however, that it is only in 
the long run that events begin to shape them- 
selves into a connected whole, and the experi- 
ences of life show an emerging harmony and 
unity. But in the processes of the long run 
our staying powers are put to a sore test. We 
demand an immediate demonstration of the end 
in the beginning, of the whole in the part. In 



82 THE WHOLE AND THE PART 

developing the full round of truth, however, 
the time element must be reckoned with, and 
we dare not overlook its supreme significance. 
Weary with waiting, we often magnify a partial 
truth out of all proportion, and seek to build 
upon its foundations in fancied security and 
confidence; or else the same partial truth we 
repudiate altogether as wholly false merely be- 
cause without the maturing and tempering of 
time it seems inadequate, unsatisfying, impos- 
sible. The laws of logic as well as the natural 
dictates of common-sense demand a delibera- 
tion of judgment which will refuse to accept a 
plausible truth too readily, or to discard too 
summarily that which may appear at the first 
glance false and unprofitable. There is a bal- 
ance of mind which wisely avoids these extremes, 
seeking the truth in patience, testing the old 
and tolerant of the new. 

It was Spinoza who insisted that life must be 
viewed as regards its deeper problems sub specie 
(Bternitatis. And what Spinoza had in mind 
was simply this, that the missing part which 
serves to make whole the scattered fragments 
can never be adequately supplied in the mere 



THE WHOLE AND THE PART 83 

course of human events and the round of years; 
but that something which transcends the hap- 
penings of time must find a place in our phi- 
losophy of life. The transitory is not self-ex- 
planatory, nor indeed can be. Its significance 
is disclosed only in the eternal complement 
which completes the broken parts. In this 
sense every truth concerning human affairs and 
human destiny is partial, and awaits the great 
revelation. 



VI 

THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

/ | A HE philosophy of Nietzsche is the procla- 
mation of a new gospel — not the redemp- 
tion of man, but his extinction. Man as a 
species is to be displaced by a new order of 
creature, the superman which is to be. Niet- 
zsche's philosophy is a diatribe against all exist- 
ing social conditions and conventions which 
tend to perpetuate the race of mankind. Man 
as we find him to-day is a conspicuous failure. 
He can develop nothing better along the old 
lines. There must be a new type. And this 
new type of man is to be characterized by com- 
plete freedom from the limitations of duty 
either to his race or to his God. This superior 
representative of humanity is to be made pos- 
sible by removing this greatest of all obstacles 
to human progress, namely, the ordinary con- 
siderations of morality. Morality paralyzes the 
spontaneity of nature; therefore man's impul- 
sive powers should not be restrained by any 

8 4 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 85 

uncomfortable burden of obligation and re- 
sponsibility. The activity of the superman 
must find its free and natural scope in a sphere 
which lies far "beyond good and evil." 

Nietzsche recognizes but one virtue, that of 
strength; but one vice, that of weakness. Hap- 
piness he defines as the feeling that power is 
increasing, that resistance is being overcome. 
The sole pleasure in life is the ecstasy of an 
overcharged and surging will. The compel- 
ling motive to activity is not the will to live, as 
Schopenhauer so persistently urged, but rather 
the will for power, the will to prevail and to 
dominate. Nietzsche declares, moreover, that 
life gives no such thing as true contentment; 
for power is insatiate and always reaches forth 
to secure more power. Man's spirit is restless 
if it is not consciously growing in strength ani 
progressing in power. Therefore, it is of the 
very nature of man to surpass himself. Instead 
of the gospel of love there is the gospel of might; 
instead of the spirit of obedience there ( is the 
cry of protest; instead of the grace of humility 
there is the arrogance of pride; instead of self- 
sacrifice, self-assertion; instead of the kindly 



86 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

offices of sympathy, the grim struggle for pre- 
eminence; instead of the recognition of man as 
a brother there is the determination to treat him 
either as a foe or a tool to further selfish ends. 

Of all the virtues to fall under Nietzsche's 
condemnation, that of sympathy receives his 
most stinging scorn. He insists that this weak 
sentiment of sympathy has always been and 
always will be an obstructive force in the nor- 
mal development of humanity; for sympathy, 
he declares, is not only a waste of strength, but 
it serves at the same time to divert the natural 
energies of human effort into channels which 
are economically unproductive and socially dis- 
organizing. According to this prophet of the 
"new dawn/' it is exceedingly significant that 
"vigorous eras, noble civilizations, see some- 
thing contemptible in sympathy, in ' brotherly 
love/ in the lack of self-assertion and of self- 
reliance/ 5 

Moreover, in the new era which he heralds 
Nietzsche maintains that the natural law of sur- 
vival must be given full and unobstructed play. 
Instead of the complex machinery of hospitals 
and asylums whose particular offices are the 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 87 

arrest of the forces of nature in cases of impaired 
constitutions and chronic maladies, there should 
be given to these forces free course in sifting the 
strong from the weak. The skill of the physi- 
cian should be devoted to the conservation of 
the superior types of humanity on the one hand, 
and on the other to the art of relieving society 
of its hampering burdens through the stern but 
eminently humane processes of euthanasia. The 
limits of the development of the race have been 
reached for the very reason that the fundamental 
law of development, the struggle for existence 
and the survival of the fittest, has been neu- 
tralized by the weak affections of pity and of 
kindness. 

The distances which separate men from their 
fellows must be emphasized. To make men 
equal is to reduce them all to the dead level 
of mediocrity. The pious effort to elevate the 
masses is as contrary to nature as it is futile, 
and futile for the very reason that it is con- 
trary to nature. Develop a few strong types; 
let all else be sacrificed to that end. 

In Nietzsche's code the morality of duty, of 
self-sacrifice, of sympathetic consideration is 



88 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

the morality for slaves; for the man of noble 
breed and noble destiny there must be a com- 
plete emancipation from the trammels of 
moral compulsion. His impulses should be 
unrestrained, his purposes unconfined. He 
must be free, free as the beast that ranges the 
forest for his prey, as unconcerned, as undis- 
turbed by any sentiment of pity or of fear, as 
disdainfully indifferent to the cry of pain and 
the impulse of mercy. Thus the great man, 
great in power and in possibility, competent 
and self-sufficient, worthy to be the progenitor 
of the race of superman, or to become the 
superman himself, shall know no law, but shall 
be a law unto himself. He shall be under no 
compulsion save to strive for the pre-eminence 
to which nature has ordained him. For him 
other men, other lives are means to develop 
his powers and manifest his glory. Such a 
being is a "transition and a destruction." 
"There is ice in his laughter/' "He is hungry, 
violent, lonely, godless; thus the lion's will 
willeth itself. His is the courage of hermits 
and eagles. He seeth the abyss, but with pride. 
He seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes; he 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 89 

graspeth the abyss with eagle's claws; such is 
his courage." 

Thus Nietzsche describes the lion and the 
eagle in man, that wild instinct of power 
which morality has tamed and the conventions 
of life have degraded to the ineffectual modes 
of propriety and custom. According to his 
creed it is better to be a brute than an ordi- 
nary man, doomed to dulness. It is better to 
cherish and develop our brute inheritance than 
to be steeped in the dreary commonplaces of 
morality. 

Who is my neighbor ? Nietzsche answers, 
"Your work is your neighbor." And he adds 
that the man who loves his neighbor as him- 
self must have an exceedingly poor opinion of 
himself. The most imperative need of the age, 
therefore, is a "transvaluation of all values"; 
that is, the kind of conduct and of character to 
which mankind has mistakenly attached value 
and indeed supreme value, must be superseded 
by new standards, by new customs and tra- 
ditions. The value emphasis must be placed 
upon those very qualities of temperament and 
disposition which the teaching and practice of 



9 o THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

the centuries have summoned man to suppress 
and to beat down under foot. It is not merely 
that "time makes ancient good uncouth/ 5 but 
that the very idea of what is good has been and 
is fundamentally abnormal and grotesque — con- 
trary to the entire economy of the universe, 
w r herever that economy has not been perverted 
by the artificial conditions created by man. Hu- 
man nature has been corroded by"moralic acid/ 5 
as this iconoclast of virtue strikingly puts it. 

In this code of new values, power alone is 
virtue; the will to win, and to win at all costs, 
the only disposition worthy of praise and 
emulation. The measure of success will then 
be the sole standard of conduct. Whatever 
prospers will be proved right; whatever fails, 
wrong. What one can do will be the only limit 
of what he may do. The supreme obligation 
of life will be the duty to forget that there is 
any such thing as obligation. 

The Dionysian view of life which Nietzsche 
so eloquently advocates — the free play of fancy 
and feeling, delight in the joy of living, follow- 
ing the lead of the impulsive will — this appeals 
to many in our day particularly who crave an 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 91 

unrestrained freedom to be and to do and to 
get whatever the wild impulse of nature may 
suggest. They would not express their phi- 
losophy of life quite as crudely and as nakedly 
as this prophet of the superman. They would 
shrink possibly from acknowledging even to 
themselves their repudiation of the customary 
morality of their day; nevertheless they order 
their lives after the manner of privileged char- 
acters who have done with the old-fashioned 
idea of duty and its claims upon them. They 
are not of the herd, and they do not propose 
to be handicapped by the petty obligations 
which the common run of mankind must as- 
sume. They believe that somehow success 
carries with it a charter of freedom, if not of 
license; and that a moral code can be made 
to order, peculiarly adapted to the needs and 
purposes of the individual after^ the manner of 
all his other possessions. 

It is indeed a very common opinion that the 
man of genius is exempt from the criticism 
naturally attaching to the moral delinquencies 
of the ordinary person. He is not like other 
men, and therefore his extraordinary powers 



92 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

entitle him to extraordinary consideration. If a 
man's public life merit praise and fame, his 
private life, which may deserve in itself public 
censure, should nevertheless be relegated to the 
shadows of silence. The greatness of the per- 
son sanctions the cha acter of his pursuits and 
pleasures. From such a point of view, attain- 
ment covers a multitude of sins. It is of course 
very convenient at times to defend in the rubrics 
of a philosophical cult certain actions which an 
old-fashioned view of things would unhesitat- 
ingly pronounce wrong and unworthy. 

The fundamental fallacy in the gospel of 
Nietzsche and the fallacy in the creed of his 
following, whether called by his name or not, 
is this, that, while willing to sacrifice everything 
for the sake of power, they overlook the sig- 
nificant fact that the stability of power may 
depend upon those very elements which are 
sacrificed in order to secure it. Power may be 
bought at too dear a price, particularly if we 
rob ourselves to pay for it. The power which 
man merely acquires externally, and which he 
may use as an instrument or as a weapon, may 
leave the man himself all the weaker for its 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 93 

possession. The power which is detached from 
the strength of personality and in no sense rep- 
resents the man is the kind of power which 
will be used irresponsibly and in all probability 
disastrously. Whenever there is power which 
is gained in defiance of the clear distinctions of 
right and wrong, power breeding power without 
let, the character is left defenceless under the 
stress of storm, when the strength of the person 
rather than the power of his possessions is tested. 
Of what avail is it if one is strong merely in 
what he has, but weak in what he is ? The cru- 
cial tests of life measure the man himself— and 
not that which merely pertains to him. 

Power shines in its glory only when it is tem- 
pered by wisdom and reverence. Stript of its 
moral setting and support, it begets the lust of 
power, and the lust of power develops the 
brute in man. We admire the brute in the 
brute, but not the brute in man; for then the 
man dies that the brute may live. Man may 
possess the light of reason, but how often, as 
Mephistopheles says: 

" Er braucht's allein 
Nur thierischer als jedes Thier zu seyn." 



94 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

I do not believe that there can ever be evolved 
a higher type of being, that myth of the fancy 
— the superman, by fostering the lowest that is 
in our present race and ignoring the highest. 
Nor do I believe that the line of human prog- 
ress is to return upon itself and draw back 
to the elemental instincts and appetites of the 
wild beast whose right is his might, whose de- 
sire is its own sanction. The power that is 
bred of impulse, that is developed without the 
labor of sacrifice and discipline, that knows no 
law of justice or of honor, that is faithless to 
friend and cruel to foe, such power creates in 
itself the forces which make for its own dis- 
integration and destruction. 

When one is overpowered with the conscious- 
ness that he belongs to a superior order of 
being, superior by virtue of his mental endow- 
ment, his possessions or his position, that per- 
son is doomed. No enemy without is so great 
a menace as this foe within. He may fear no 
foe; but his danger lies in the fact that he does 
not fear himself. There is always a subtle 
undermining of power in the idea which one 
may cherish that fate has elevated him above 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 95 

his fellows in order that they may serve his 
purposes, enhance his fame, and minister to 
his vanity. For while he may look down upon 
them in arrogant pride, sensitive to their ap- 
plause, but disdaining their touch, and while he 
may hold his head high above the level of the 
crowd, nevertheless that man stands upon feet 
of clay. Nietzsche expresses the desire that he 
may be a light to men, not to lead them but to 
blind them. Such a light burns inward as a 
fire, consuming its own sources. It is charac- 
teristic of the small man to make others aware 
of their insignificance. But it is the glory of 
the great man to render others conscious of the 
possibility at least of their own greatness. In 
contact with his personality power is imparted 
by a subtle process of moral induction. 

Put to the only test which could possibly 
have any significance whatsoever for Nietzsche 
himself, namely, the test of survival and per- 
manency, the power which he extols is seen to 
fall of its own weight. It is self-destructive. 
It overreaches itself and cannot hold what it 
would grasp, nor can it sustain itself in the 
heights to which it fain would rise. The power 



96 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

which is subversive of the moral order of the 
world, which operates in disregard of the com- 
mon rights of man and in defiance of the laws 
of God, which erupts in tyranny and oppres- 
sion, such power does not tend to produce a 
new order of being, representing a more perfect 
type of humanity, or shall we say superhu- 
manity. 

If the superman is to live his life "beyond 
good and evil," he will surely not live long. His 
fellow-supermen will claim a like immunity from 
moral restraint; they too will be driven by the 
greed of gain and the lust of power; they too 
will be without bowels of mercy, implacable, re- 
lentless, knowing how to hate and to destroy. 
The possibility of the goodly company of super- 
men, of the Nietzschean breed, is one which the 
imagination may well dwell upon with reward- 
ing amusement, if not with profit. 

I do not believe that it is possible to develop 
a race in the lines of progress, or to evolve a 
wholly new race by creating conditions of ex- 
treme individualism, and causing them to pre- 
vail. If the individual is to be improved through 
the sacrifice of the many, the deterioration of the 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 97 

many will inevitably react upon the individ- 
ual, menacing his attainment and limiting his 
progress. The Burbank blackberry or plum 
may be propagated by a process of destroying 
thousands of plants that one may flourish and 
become the progenitor of a new species. Man, 
however, is bound to man by different ties. 
The human species is not represented by the 
individual as such, regarded solely in the light 
of his individuality. For the mere individual is 
not wholly a man. The man is essentially a 
being whom to know aright and to appreciate 
at his full significance is to know in the light 
of the relations which he sustains to his fellows. 
The real man is the man in his human setting. 
The detached person whether isolated volun- 
tarily as the hermit, or involuntarily as the 
exile, is so far forth less a man. And the same 
is true in the case where the isolation is effected 
through the pride of that superior power which 
delights in emphasizing the distance between 
man and man. Nietzsche hates above all things 
the spirit of democracy. He abhors the masses, 
their murmurings and complaints, their cheap 
pleasures, their vulgar ills and needs. Let the 



98 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

great man, he would insist, free himself from 
the crowd, proving his superiority and pro- 
claiming his disdain. 

It might be well to ask, however, who are 
the great men of the world, as the world counts 
greatness ? 

They are the men who in their greatness 
are in some measure representative. They are 
not a spectacle for others to admire or to fear. 
They are in one way and another the champions 
of the cause of humanity. Their power be- 
comes a part of the vigor of the social group 
of which they are members. They are the 
mind to think, the voice to speak, and the 
strong arm to act for their moral constituency. 

Throughout the records of history the su- 
preme manifestations of power have been the 
instances of concerted action where the indi- 
vidual feels himself one with his comrades, 
where shoulder touches shoulder in the fight, 
and the distinction of the leader is merged 
in the glory and the claims of his cause. The 
great man always and everywhere is he who 
is consecrated to a cause which is greater than 
himself. The spirit of loyalty tempers his 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 99 

power; makes him wise, just, self-governed. 
But the spirit of loyalty cannot exist and flour- 
ish in a nature which has no reverence for any- 
thing higher than itself. The old mythology 
had a solid basis of truth in its belief that 
Zeus fearing that the entire race of mankind 
should be exterminated came to their rescue, 
bringing with him reverence and justice, to be 
the law of conduct, the bond of friendship, and 
the stability of the communal life. 

The doctrines of Nietzsche have a wholly 
opposite trend, creating a caste spirit of the 
extreme sort, driving the wedge between master 
and man everywhere. In the midst of the 
democratic institutions of our modern life, he 
would constitute a mediaeval feudalism wherein 
the mere good pleasure of the over-lord is law 
to the serf. He would start centrifugal forces 
at work in society which separate man from 
man, and destroy the organic centres of sta- 
bility, — the home, the church, and the state. 
He would concentrate power and wealth in an 
oligarchy of superior creatures who know no 
law but that of their own convenience and se- 
curity. Nietzsche overlooks the fact, or else 



ioo THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

in his irresponsible vagaries he ignores it, that 
human power is of slight avail if the only ma- 
chinery to which it can be applied is hopelessly 
out of gear. 

Nietzsche's message to his age he puts into 
the mouth of the mythical personage, Zara- 
thustra, who moves among men but is not of 
them, who speaks as an oracle, herald of the 
superman, "strong as the morning sun com- 
ing from dark mountains," prophet of the new 
day and the "great noon." His is a mirthless 
laughter, a cynical joy, a wild wisdom. His 
happiness is in the terror of the spirit. " Free 
from the happiness of slaves, saved from God 
and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, great 
and lonely," such is Zarathustra, Nietzsche's 
ideal of the hope of mankind, the ideal which he 
felt that he himself had in some measure real- 
ized. Zarathustra comes into the market-place 
from the wilderness and mountains; his mes- 
sage is delivered and to the mountains and wil- 
derness he returns. He judges the life of man as 
one having no part in it. His judgment is con- 
demnation. He passes through the world as a 
storm moves over fair fields; in its wake, dis- 



THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 101 

may and destruction. For the world's joy, 
Zarathustra has only a sneer; for its sorrows, 
scorn; for its frailty, ridicule; for its achieve- 
ment, contempt; for its hope, a curse. If this 
is the prophet of the new era, what will its 
messiah be ? Who will restore when all is 
destroyed ? 

I do not believe in a new world which is 
essentially of such a nature that it can be 
evolved only out of the ashes of the old. If 
the continuity of the past is to be wholly broken, 
if all history is to be wiped out, if the old order 
is to be completely destroyed, what pledge have 
we of the new ? "One must have chaos within 
to enable him to give birth to a dancing star." 
"Thus spake Zarathustra." Beneath all fig- 
ure and epigram, however, there is this funda- 
mental idea of Nietzsche's philosophy of life — ■ 
that in the old order there is nothing worthy of 
conservation to form the beginnings of the new. 
"O my brethren," says Zarathustra, "not 
backwards shall your nobility gaze, but forward ! 
Expelled ye shall be from all fathers' and fore- 
fathers' lands! Your children's land ye shall 
love (be this love your new nobility) the land 



102 THE GOSPEL OF MIGHT 

undiscovered, in the remotest sea! For it I bid 
your sails seek and seek! In your children ye 
shall make amends for being your father's chil- 
dren. Thus ye shall redeem all that is past!" 
I must confess that I do not see how the expec- 
tation of a new world can be rationally justified 
if the past must be acknowledged a complete 
and dismal failure. He who despises the past 
should be naturally sceptical of the future. 
Any philosophy of life is under suspicion which 
seeks to destroy and not fulfil the promise of the 
years that are gone, and which does not build 
upon the foundation of human nature as it has 
proved itself to be, but rather upon that which 
with wild fatuity we may wish it to become. 

If we are to look forward to a new heaven and 
a new earth — a universe without God and with- 
out man, where the Zarathustrian race shall 
flourish, then as this great cosmic drama is 
being enacted, set to the wild strains of the 
Dionysian chorus, an inevitable question will 
arise, Is this a comedy or a tragedy ? 



VII 

THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

fT is no doubt natural, to associate the play 
of the imagination exclusively with the 
artistic temperament, and to think that it 
has no place in the experience of one who is 
immersed in the busy affairs of life and is 
brought into daily contact with plain facts and 
prosaic situations. On the contrary, however, 
there is a very important function which the 
imagination performs in the more sober proc- 
esses of reason as well as in the flights of fancy. 
In matters of sentiment, of feeling, of taste, 
the imagination appears at play. In the offices 
of reason it serves quite a different function. 
It is there the imagination at work. It is the 
efficient imagination. The phrase, the dialectic 
imagination, will express this peculiar function 
— that of facilitating the work of the reason in 
the effort to solve the matter-of-fact problems 
of life. It is a function which is essentially 
logical. 

i°3 



104 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

This is the kind of imagination which builds 
upon fact. It is not merely the plaything of 
the fancy; it is an instrument of the reason. 
The business of interpreting the every-day ex- 
periences of life, and compelling them to serve 
ends of the greatest efficiency, is an art which 
in an especial sense is dependent upon the col- 
laboration of the imagination. The imagina- 
tion thus acts as the conceiving function of 
thought. It is the eye of the mind. A fact, as 
a brute fact merely, is a matter of simple obser- 
vation. The imagination is the mind's contri- 
bution to the given fact. No fact by itself is 
self-illuminating. It is like a diamond which 
is placed in a dark room. The light of a well- 
furnished mind must illumine the fact before it 
will flash back its radiance. It is the inner 
vision alone which is capable of interpreting 
what the outer vision merely reports. We some- 
times have to shut our eyes in order to see. 
The hidden significance which any fact may 
possess, its relation to other facts, what it may 
suggest, its value in terms of the uses to which 
it may be put, all arise from the activity of the 
imagination. Every fact — that is, every signif- 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 105 

icant fact — is to the mind so much raw mate- 
rial, suggestive of indefinite possibilities. It has 
to be fashioned by the thought. It is to the 
mind what the block of marble is to the fancy 
of the sculptor. It must be dominated by an 
idea — that is, by the imagination. 

A resourceful man in dealing with the every- 
day facts of experience must be able to picture 
them in a variety of possible settings and rela- 
tions. He should possess what I would call 
the hypothetical instinct — that is, the art of 
suggesting certain suppositions and of premis- 
ing their necessary consequences. It is the 
ability to see the effect in the cause and the cause 
in the effect. The one who may have this gift 
is able to perform a series of ideal experiments 
with the facts in his possession. It is not 
necessary to put them to any actual test; in 
all probability it will be impossible or at least 
impracticable to do so. His imagination, how- 
ever, can sketch in fancy various probable re- 
sults, which he will therefore accept or discard 
as a reasonable working hypothesis according 
to their promise of rewarding realization. A 
skill in supposition is merely a phase of the art 



io6 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

of imagination. It is an exercise in applied 
logic. 

Our body of knowledge is nothing more than 
an amorphous mass of unrelated facts unless it 
is touched by the imagination. The fancy gives 
form to knowledge, relating part to part and 
part to the whole. It exercises the art of gen- 
eralship in massing facts in proper order and 
sequence, and in directing their movement ac- 
cording to a comprehensive plan. Knowledge 
must have life also as well as form. Fact with- 
out fancy is dead. The imagination, therefore, 
must be summoned in order to give to the body 
of knowledge the spirit of life. 

In all reasoning the mind puts together its 
material in some new combination possessing a 
significance which the various parts taken sep- 
arately could not in the remotest manner reveal. 
The ingenious power to work out new combina- 
tions of old material is the peculiar function of 
the imagination, which in this manner gives a 
touch of originality even to the most common- 
place tasks of life. By the constructive proc- 
esses of the imagination every form of activity 
is widened in scope and deepened in efficiency 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 107 

by the brooding thought which sees things in 
the light of what they may become. It is the 
imagination which sees the need and is capable 
also of devising the means to meet it. 

This provokes necessarily a critical spirit, a 
spirit of restlessness which chafes under the 
imperfections of the present because a vision 
of a better future sways before it. The discon- 
tent which is resourceful always acts as a spur 
to the imagination. It is essentially the spirit 
of progress which discovers the possibility of im- 
provement and presses toward its realization. 
An unimaginative people are proverbially un- 
progressive. , They are satisfied with the present 
because they see no future. " Where there is no 
vision the people perish ." However, the vision 
which comes to the prophet or to the far-seeing 
statesman is not merely the chance creation of 
the fancy. It is not the poet's vision. It is not 
the outcome of a fugitive thought or a chance 
suggestion. The imagination which discerns 
the future is the imagination which sees and is 
able to interpret the necessary implications of 
the present. The seer's vision must be founded 
upon insight; otherwise his foresight can have 



io8 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

no substantial basis in reality. The imagina- 
tion pictures the future significantly only when 
the future appears as a necessary consequence 
of present conditions. It does not merely come 
after the present; it grows out of it. To see 
what underlies the present, is to see beyond it. 
How can we know what is possible unless at the 
same time we are able to penetrate beneath the 
surface of what is actual ? Penetration, indeed, 
is the root of prophecy. The imagination, 
therefore, cannot swing clear of the reason. 
Although in a certain sense the imagination is 
free, yet nevertheless it is conditioned. Its de- 
pendence in this phase of its activity is upon 
the guidance of the reason, and that in no sense 
is a limitation of its real freedom. That is a 
poor freedom indeed which scorns the lead of 
the reason, for the fancy which waits upon wis- 
dom has by no means lost its spontaneity or the 
spirit of originality. The imagination in its 
aesthetic ven ures may enter a region where the 
prosaic circumstances of life and the actual 
conditions of existence are consciously left be- 
hind; but throughout this sphere it is the im- 
agination at play rather than the imagination 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 109 

at work. Even here It might be shown that the 
play of the fancy must indirectly at least obey 
those rules of the game which reality prescribes 
and reason formulates. The unreal world of 
adventure, romance, or poetry must neverthe- 
less present a show of verisimilitude. 

My contention is simply that the work of life, 
however prosaic it may seem to be, calls for an 
imaginative mind — a mind of vision and yet 
not visionary, fertile in device and yet withal 
essentially reasonable, grounded in common- 
sense and yet not a slave to the obvious, emi- 
nently capable of meeting the possibilities of 
the future because appreciative of the signifi- 
cance of present condition and circumstance. 
Reason without the imagination is impotent. 
It may be able to deal with the commonplace 
and the routine, but it is feebly inadequate to 
cope with hidden possibilities. It is quite con- 
tent to follow with the crowd, and to do the or- 
dinary and the usual. It sees the actual, but 
overlooks those elements of a potential nature 
in which the secret of success may be discovered. 
It moves in the round of habit, but blazes before 
it no path of progress or way of reform. Its 



no THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

conservatism is a concession to inertia rather 
than adherence to principle. 

Custom is the natural anaesthetic both of the 
mind and of the will. And if a man's imagina- 
tion is deadened by disuse, he can never think 
vigorously or see keenly. He yields to the cir- 
cumstances which confront him, and is not 
able to overcome the inevitable obstacles or 
compel them to serve his purposes. He is blind 
to opportunity and has never heard the challenge 
of circumstance. He has no desire to invade 
the regions of the possible. The unimagina- 
tive mind is the dull mind, plodding and per- 
severing, it may be, but with no vital touch. 
It is so dominated by the usual and the or- 
dinary that it is inhospitable to those larger 
ideas which tend to provoke its hidden powers. 

The mind not only deals with facts and 
things, but it has to do with persons as well. 
To live with men, to work with them, to control 
and direct them, to understand them, to bear 
with them, to accommodate oneself to their 
ideas, requires a special gift which is very inti- 
mately dependent upon the imagination. It is 
the art of picturing to ourselves the point of view 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION in 

of the other man and of leading him also to see 
our point of view. It is an appreciation which 
is born of sympathy; and sympathy is only 
a special phase of the imagination. To know 
the possibilities of men is a higher art than to 
know the possibilities of things. There is no 
gift of such incalculable value to one in admin- 
istrative control as the ability to recognize the 
coming man, and discount his future efficiency 
and usefulness. To understand what men think, 
and especially what they feel, to appreciate 
their needs and desires, their weaknesses and 
limitations as well as their strength, requires 
a power of divination in a consummate degree. 
To provoke the possibilities of others, there 
must be some range of fancy within oneself. 

The imagination, however, is not only the 
instrument of the reason, providing its premises, 
massing its argument, discovering its proof, and 
revealing the various possibilities of its appli- 
cation. It is more than this. It is the mind's 
support in those long stretches of patient expec- 
tation, when the predictions of reason have not 
yet been verified in fact. Imagination is the 
ally of patience. The intellect has its need of 



ii2 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

faith as well as man's religious nature. The 
power to see the thing that must be and to 
believe in its ultimate fulfilment, 

" To hope till hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates/' 

this is the high office of the imagination. 

If, therefore, the imagination plays this im- 
portant role throughout the whole range of our 
thinking, the question of its cultivation becomes 
a matter for serious consideration. It is a prob- 
lem which concerns not merely the pleasures of 
appreciation and the delights of the mind, but 
has a direct and intimate bearing upon the 
efficiency and success of one's work itself. For 
this reason, then, there is a far greater need to 
exercise the powers of the imagination as a 
preparation for the practical pursuits of life 
than for the artistic. The artistic temperament 
is endowed by nature with the imaginative strain 
and its development will care for itself. But 
with a mind which is absorbed in affairs, it is 
far more imperative that the imagination should 
be quickened and its activity fashioned into 
habit. It is rather a futile task to attempt the 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 113 

training of one's power of imagination in any 
direct manner; it is quite possible, on the other 
hand, to produce and foster an imaginative 
habit of mind by cultivating certain other habits 
which in turn will prove tributary to the end 
desired. Imagination is a spirit which must 
be wooed indirectly. 

There is, for instance, the possibility of 
quickening our powers of observation, not so 
much as regards the extent and accuracy of the 
external sense of sight, but rather in respect to 
the inner sense of interpretation and discern- 
ment. For it is the peculiar function of the 
mind's eye to correct the first impressions medi- 
ated by the senses, to amplify them, and, above 
all, to apprehend their deeper significance. 
The vision of thought always transcends the 
vision of sense. It was no flight of the fancy, 
but one of the more serious offices of imagina- 
tive reason which was capable of seeing behind 
the daily rising and setting of the sun, the com- 
plete Copernican programme of our solar sys- 
tem. It is not the genius alone who possesses 
this gift. The art of seeing beneath the surface 
and uncovering buried meanings is one in which 



ii 4 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

we all can acquire a skill if we will only take the 
pains persistently to exercise it. It is the result 
of habit and discipline. It is no easy task, but 
the effort, arduous though it may be, is abun- 
dantly repaid by the result. 

There is still another habit which tends to 
stimulate our imaginative faculty, namely, the 
endeavor in the exercise of our memory to re- 
construct the original elements of an experience 
rather than merely restate them. The ability 
to recall facts literally in the same order and 
relations as one originally observed them illus- 
trates the lowest order of memory. The man 
who is a bore usually has a good memory, but 
he has no imagination. The art of conversa- 
tion consists in a certain skill of omission as well 
as that of emphasis. What not to say and what 
to lay stress upon, the imagination with its se- 
lective instinct alone can determine. There is 
an art of forgetting as well as of remembering. 

There is all the difference in the world be- 
tween learning a lesson which we can repeat 
upon occasion and mastering a truth so that it 
becomes the ready servant of our thought. To 
assimilate knowledge rather than receive it whole 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 115 

requires some functioning of our imagination, for 
we must in our thoughts so transform the orig- 
inal elements of an experience that we can free 
them from local and temporal color and from 
the setting of particular circumstance, thus ren- 
dering them available for our purposes in other 
situations of a wholly different character. What 
we learn in one setting we usually wish to use 
in another, for experience rarely repeats itself 
in precisely the same manner or in the same 
order of events. It is, therefore, necessary in 
the acquisition of knowledge that we should 
endeavor to grasp the salient features of every 
situation, determining their true significance by 
a sifting process which will separate the essen- 
tial from the non-essential. 

This art of giving a universal significance to 
a particular incident is due to a subtle alchemy 
of the mind by means of which the elements of 
knowledge are transmuted into forms admitting 
of significant application throughout the whole 
range of thinking and of action. To acquire 
this art one should endeavor to cultivate the 
habit of mastering a principle rather than learn- 
ing a rule. A principle differs from a rule in this 



n6 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

respect that the principle can deal adequately 
with the special case. The exception never proves 
the rule; it may, however, disclose some funda- 
mental principle which is capable of explaining 
the exceptional case. That time-honored say- 
ing that the exception proves the rule is merely 
a mistranslation of the Latin proverb, exceptio 
regulam probed, which should read, — the excep- 
tion tests the rule. No rule is sufficiently for- 
tified to withstand such a test unless there is 
a recognized principle behind it. A rule is a 
mere order of procedure, and one who has 
learned the rule is utterly at a loss whenever a 
strange situation suddenly confronts him to 
which the rule is not obviously applicable. It 
is necessary for him to penetrate the disguise of 
the exceptional case and to discover the funda- 
mental principle behind it; and this is itself 
an act of the imagination. 

Also much may be gained in increasing our 
powers of imagination by acquiring the habit 
of presenting to ourselves the problem which 
every significant experience in life suggests, 
namely, that of economy in adjusting means to 
ends. How may larger and more valuable ends 



THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 117 

be secured by a wiser choice of means ? How 
may present conditions be improved ? How may 
the traditional mistakes be avoided ? How 
may we escape from the sway of the common- 
place ? These are some of the queries which 
tend to keep the mind alert and open to the 
possibility of a new order of things. The habit 
of contriving devices of improvement, or re- 
sourceful suggestion and progressive endeavor, 
is a constant spur to the imagination, whose 
power is increased with every new demand made 
upon it. Whatever the end of one's activity 
may be, it must appear first of all in the form 
of an idea in the mind, an idea which sees the 
thing that ought to be and compels its realiza- 
tion. Reason may plan, but imagination holds 
the torch to light the way, and if a life is to have 
intelligent direction and successful issue it dare 
not scorn the lead of the fancy which is born of 
reason. 

The imagination, therefore, in the especial 
utility function which we have considered of in- 
creasing the sum total of life's efficiency, is at 
the same time not wholly devoid of a certain 
aesthetical significance. For any labor which 



n8 THE DIALECTIC IMAGINATION 

thought expands and directs according to a 
dominant idea is, in a sense, a work of art. 
There is always some one method which is 
superior in the completeness of its results to 
any other; there is always a way which is the 
most direct and most efficacious; there is always 
a process which gives the most valuable product; 
there is, in short, about everything, however 
prosaic and commonplace, an excellence which 
is ideal; and in whatever sense it is ideal it 
possesses an artistic value and significance. 
The craftsman who by the creative power of an 
idea discovers a hidden possibility in his craft 
and realizes it in actual form or deed is in that 
single respect at least an artist. It is the im- 
agination which suggests these possibilities of 
excellence, a better for every good, and beyond 
that a best whose shadow falls across attain- 
ment as a challenge and an inspiration. 



VIII 

THE ART OF THINKING 

npHINKING is not an automatic function of 
the brain as breathing is of the lungs. 
For there are many persons who do not think at 
all, and yet manage to exist. Their lives are 
merely a series of sense-impressions which serve 
to stimulate certain habitual activities within a 
confined range of daily routine. And in the 
case of those whose minds do aspire to the dig- 
nity of thought, there is an unlimited variety in 
the method and the manner of the process em- 
ployed; for thinking has no common programme 
or procedure. It is an accomplishment which 
must be attained, each in his own way, and 
which assumes always a pronounced individual 
quality. To obtain a mastery of the process of 
thought and direct it to efficient ends is an art. 
The very fact that we regard it as such, is itself 
a decided advantage in our endeavor to attain 

proficiency in its exercise. 

119 



i2o THE ART OF THINKING 

As a science, thinking has its fundamental 
laws, its logic; as an art, however, it has no 
body of set rules which we may learn once for 
all, and ever after slavishly and blindly follow. 
There is no formula for wisdom. The art of 
thinking requires a command of all the resources 
of skill and inventive device of which our nat- 
ures are capable. The true aim of education 
is to disclose the secret of the art. For educa- 
tion is not, as many mistakenly believe, a process 
of furnishing grist for the mill to grind; it is 
rather the work of constructing and perfecting 
the machinery of the mind itself, and of impart- 
ing the art of operating it intelligently as a mas- 
ter-workman. 

The peculiar task of the teacher is that of 
informing the mind rather than that of giving 
it information. The one process prepares the 
mind for the free exercise of its own activities; 
the other merely furnishes it with so much to 
learn and so much to remember. The training 
of the mind should always be regarded as an 
end in itself, and never as a means to some other 
end, however important such an end may be. 

The function of the school is not primarily 



THE ART OF THINKING 121 

to prepare its students for college; nor is it the 
function of the college to prepare its students 
for business or professional careers. This idea 
of preparation as the sole end of education is 
a fallacy which entails most disastrous conse- 
quences. It tends to induce that lamentable 
attitude of mind which is always seeking some- 
thing for the sake of something else. Educa- 
tion is far more than a preparatory discipline, 
vague and indefinite in its reach. It must be 
capable of showing by immediate results some 
obvious progress in the art of thinking. Noth- 
ing is so common to-day as this false concep- 
tion concerning the chief business of school or 
college life. 

If a boy in one of our so-called preparatory 
schools should be asked, "What is your object 
in the work which you are doing day after day 
at school ? " in all probability he would reply 
without any hesitation whatsoever — "To get 
into college." Also if a similar question should 
be put to any freshman in college, his reply 
would probably be along the same line — "To 
finish my freshman year so as to become a full- 
fledged sophomore." The senior's answer would 



122 THE ART OF THINKING 

be no doubt in a like vein — "To finish my col- 
lege course and get out into the world." The 
school-boy's aim is to get into college, and the 
aim of the college undergraduate is to get out. 
This is most surely a strange anomaly. It is 
the fundamental error of being willing to put 
forth effort in daily toil year by year without 
the remotest conception of what result is desired 
or is desirable. The eagerness to advance over 
so much ground merely for the purpose of 
leaving it behind, and with a complete incapac- 
ity to appreciate the real test of progress and 
the true end to be attained, is one of the most 
common and insidious errors of the day among 
our students. Education prepares for one thing 
and for one thing only — the ability to think. It 
is a pitiable situation when a student is wholly 
unconscious of the main thing which he is sup- 
posed to be pursuing. Does his mind work ? 
Does he know how to use it ? Is there unnec- 
essary friction here or there ? Does the machin- 
ery at times seem out of gear ? These are the 
questions of chief concern. 

Moreover, anything which is so dignified as to 
be regarded as an end in itself, as the training 



THE ART OF THINKING 123 

of the mind always should be, is for this very 
reason of distinctly greater value whenever it 
eventually comes to be used as a means to 
attain some other end. The student whose en- 
deavor is not merely to amass sufficient knowl- 
edge to pass the entrance examinations for col- 
lege, but primarily to acquire the art of using 
his mind so as to produce the greatest possible 
effect with the least expenditure of effort, he is 
the one above all others who in my judgment is 
best prepared to realize to the full the possi- 
bilities of a college career. The one whom we 
count illy prepared for college is not as a rule 
the young man who lacks a book or two of his 
Virgil or Caesar, but the one who fails to grasp 
the point of what he studies, and does not know 
how to go about his tasks in an efficient and 
masterly manner. The deficiency which can- 
not be made good is after all the qualitative and 
not the quantitative one. A method of work 
counts far more than the knowledge of a mul- 
tiplicity of facts. A student once made the fol- 
lowing comment upon a question in an exam- 
ination paper: "I do not regard this a fair 
question, because it requires thinking in order 



124 THE ART OF THINKING 

to answer it properly." Such a statement be- 
trays not only a lack of intelligence, but also of 
a sense of humor as well. 

The problem which usually presents itself in 
the education of a young boy is this — an un- 
trained mind, approaching an unknown subject 
without interest and without curiosity. A prob- 
lem such as this, wherein all quantities are 
unknown and all negative, might very naturally 
be regarded as wholly indeterminate. And yet 
this is the teacher's problem, and it is one 
which he dare not regard as insoluble. Ob- 
viously the beginnings of a solution will lie in 
the direction of stimulating an interest in the 
work which must be undertaken. And it is 
just at this point that a very serious error of 
judgment is often committed; for in attempting 
to create such an interest, one's effort may be 
entirely misdirected. It is not wise to depend 
solely upon the subject-matter of their studies 
to arouse and sustain the interest of students. 
The "Arabian Nights," if written in Greek, 
could hardly suffice to hold the attention through 
all the drudgery of the Greek grammar and syn- 
tax. There is one interest which, above all 



THE ART OF THINKING 125 

others, it is of paramount importance to awaken 
— the student must become interested at the 
very start in the working of his own mind. In 
the process of mastering the difficulties of a new 
subject he must be led to see at once that there 
are certain mental processes which he can soon 
learn to perform with facility and also with 
efficiency. No act is so absorbing in interest 
as that which we are conscious of doing well. 
And the art of thinking is no exception. To 
feel that we can work with skill gives a relish to 
every task, however difficult it may be. The 
initial consciousness of power is the beginning 
and promise of progress. 

A boy's play is often a form of work, and yet 
he throws himself into it with untiring enthu- 
siasm and earnestness, because he knows the 
game and its art. Indeed his pleasure in it is 
in proportion to his ability to play the game 
with ease and skill. How long would any one's 
interest continue in his efforts to learn the art of 
skating, if his ankles never recovered from the 
early tendency to wobble, and if progress never 
passed beyond the first experiences of catas- 
trophes and bruises ? The pleasure of any 



i 2 6 THE ART OF THINKING 

sport is evidently in knowing how. We enjoy 
what we do well. The person who gives up 
the game of golf in disgust after futile attempts 
to learn the art of the game has obviously found 
no interest in the pursuit, for the very reason 
that his attempts have proved of no avail, and 
because he has failed to acquire any facility 
in drive, approach, or put. There is always 
a satisfaction in the free exercise of any faculty, 
whether of body or of mind, and therefore it is 
altogether important that every student should 
come to regard the art of thinking in much the 
same way as he has been accustomed to regard 
skating as an art, or swimming, or golf, or any 
other game which requires skill and resource. 
He should be impressed with the fact, more- 
over, that every pursuit has its own peculiar art, 
which must be discovered if proficiency in that 
pursuit is to be attained. There is a method 
of approach, a point of attack, a correct pro- 
cedure, which is designated by the phrase, 
"proper form," and which constitutes in any 
activity the essential conditions of most efficient 
and satisfactory results. Correct or proper 
form in this sense always represents the method 



THE ART OF THINKING 127 

of maximum efficiency combined with mini- 
mum effort, and is attained only through the 
evolution of a common experience. Thinking 
also has its peculiar and appropriate form, and 
the art of thinking consists in acquiring this 
form of procedure, call it the form of play, or 
the form of work, as you please. One must 
understand the technique of his craft. It is fool- 
ish and short-sighted to give one's time and 
attention wholly to the matter of that which 
one learns, and little or none to any inquiry 
concerning the method which is employed in 
the process. To know the various devices by 
which a mass of bewildering facts may be re- 
duced to order and system, to discover the trail 
and follow it to the heart of an unknown region, 
to command a situation by understanding it, 
to see the point, to interpret aright what is only 
implied or suggested, to know where to place the 
emphasis, to discriminate between what is essen- 
tial and what is accidental, — this is the art of 
thinking. 

Much of our thinking is similar to the proc- 
esses which we employ in solving a difficult puz- 
zle. There is a universal interest in all forms 



128 THE ART OF THINKING 

of puzzles, an interest which is not confined by 
any means to the days of our childhood. To 
solve a problem, to translate a sentence whose 
interpretation is not obvious, or to perform an 
experiment in the laboratory, — these are tasks 
which create the same kind of interest as that 
which we feel when we find ourselves poring 
over an absorbing puzzle. The Latin sentence, 
for instance, is a puzzle, and there are certain 
well-known devices for disentangling its many 
knots and twists. No one need feel hopelessly 
lost in the intricate mazes of the Latin syntax, 
if only he has learned the art, or shall I say, 
the trick, which is necessary. When the trick 
is once mastered, and it is not a difficult one 
to learn, then there is a pleasure in the act- 
ual performance itself of construing sentence 
after sentence, because of the quiet satisfaction 
which we all feel in recognizing that what we 
are attempting is turning out successfully. We 
will always find sufficient variety in detail to 
stimulate our interest and not to deaden it. To 
make such an experience possible, it is abso- 
lutely necessary to guard against crowding a 
student's mind, and burdening his memory with 



THE ART OF THINKING 129 

a load of unessential material to which he can 
see no point or bearing. It is foolish and a 
waste of time and energy to teach him the com- 
plete Latin grammar at the initial stages of his 
study. He should have at first only a working 
knowledge of so much of the grammar as he 
will need in construing simple sentences. Let 
him be taught the art of using knowledge as 
rapidly as he acquires it. The mere process of 
storing information is not in itself desirable. 
Bonded knowledge is so much unavailable 
energy. As one learns the art of using the 
material at his command progress is assured. 
On the other hand, to crowd the memory with- 
out the active exercise of the intellect to accom- 
pany it, dulls the mind and destroys all interest 
in any subject whatsoever. The mind, like the 
body, weakens when it loses the power of as- 
similating its food. If the student is constantly 
given something to do, and if he is started in 
an unknown field with a series of successes, he 
will gain that confidence which is necessary to 
sustained interest and persistent effort. 

This does not mean, however, that only 
those tasks are to be attempted which can be 



130 THE ART OF THINKING. 

easily accomplished. One must learn also how 
to overcome obstinate difficulties and to perse- 
vere through all the tedium and drudgery which 
attend the early stages of every subject. But 
the mind must be prepared for the more exact- 
ing demands by acquiring a facility in dealing 
with the complete round of elementary methods 
and processes peculiar to the nature of the sub- 
ject itself. No one can fight without weapons, 
nor work without tools. To overcome the 
difficulties which the labors of the mind must 
inevitably meet, one must have mastered all the 
preliminary difficulties of method and proced- 
ure. He is best prepared to endure the strain 
of the severer tasks who has already gained 
some consciousness of power in commanding 
the simpler conditions which the beginnings of 
an inquiry naturally offer. Perseverance in 
itself is not necessarily a virtue; it certainly is 
not if we are on the wrong road or if we are 
going about our work in the wrong way, and in 
total ignorance of what is necessary for success. 
It is a great mistake to urge any one to keep 
pushing ahead in an undertaking when the 
most valuable service that could possibly be 



THE ART OF THINKING 131 

rendered to him would be to lead him back 
to the very beginning. The conscientious and 
plodding worker who keeps doggedly at his 
tasks with little or no results to show save a 
dulling of the mind and a breaking of his 
spirit should never be commended for his dili- 
gence. He is the rather to be regarded as a 
pathological subject. He needs some expert 
treatment. The diligence which is ineffectual 
is like the energy which is expended in a tread- 
mill detached from any working machinery. 
There is no output to it — only weariness and 
disgust. There is no merit in unavailing virtue. 
There is an error and a most prevalent one 
that mathematical studies require some pecul- 
iar and especial talent which if not possessed 
by native endowment can never be acquired. 
Here again there is an art which can be ac- 
quired as readly, I believe, as that of any other 
subject. The point which should be particu- 
larly noted is, that, without possessing the secret 
of this art, less progress can be made in the study 
of mathematics than in any other subject, and 
also the region of hopeless confusion is sooner 
reached. There is no subject, therefore, in 



i 3 2 THE ART OF THINKING 

which so much depends upon making a proper 
start, and learning the proper trick and form. 
If the approaches are securely possessed, other 
difficulties can be overcome, and that without a 
loss of interest in the subject. It is impossible 
to discover the art of mathematical thinking by 
attempting to memorize complete demonstra- 
tions so that one can reproduce them word for 
word in a wholly mechanical manner. It is 
absolutely necessary to understand the signifi- 
cance of every process which is employed so 
as to be aware of the mathematical device in 
attacking the point to be proved, or the prob- 
lem to be solved; and it must be possible for 
us also to recognize a similar method when we 
again see it. As a matter of fact the devices 
which are ordinarily used in mathematical 
thinking are not many, nor are they difficult 
to master. They may all be grouped under sev- 
eral distinct types, a dozen or more, which occur 
again and again. When familiar with them, a 
facility in their use follows readily, and the bug- 
bear of mathematical studies may be once for 
all removed. The subject can then be pursued 
with pleasure and satisfaction; for there is a con- 



THE ART OF THINKING 133 

tinual challenge of one's inventive powers, whose 
exercise, when attended by a fair measure of 
success, always creates an absorbing interest, 
and it may be at times a certain fascination as 
well. 

In a certain class in mathematics there was 
a student who was most conscientious and plod- 
ding and yet with it all completely discouraged 
in his work. One day his instructor asked him 
concerning his difficulties, and added: "This 
subject cannot possibly be as difficult as you are 
bent upon making it; in fact no subject is so 
hard as you evidently think this to be. You are 
simply wasting your time, because you are going 
about your work in the wrong way." This in- 
cident represents a very common experience. 
There is a pitiable waste of effort in the most 
painstaking tasks of some of our students. They 
have never learned the art of study. This want 
tends to create difficulties which are not inher- 
ent in the subject itself, and to magnify those 
that necessarily pertain to it. 

The greatest possible obstacle to progress of 
any kind is lack of method. Where, however, 
the student has learned the secret of making all 



i 3 4 THE ART OF THINKING 

effort tell, so that there is no unrequited toil, 
then the question of interest in his work, or 
of the results that may be naturally expected, 
or of the progress that he may be making, will 
take care of itself. Kant has put the art of 
teaching in a sentence: "I do not attempt to 
teach my students philosophy, but merely to 
think philosophically ." 

The consciousness of the ability to use one's 
own mind is not of course the sole interest in 
the life of a student. But it is the initial and 
central interest nevertheless; and other inter- 
ests will be found to range themselves about it 
as a nucleus. It is essential that such an inter- 
est should be created and maintained at all 
hazards. Start the beginner on the right road, 
point him straight and give him his direction, 
and all else will follow. A curiosity to know 
the reason of things, a critical discernment im- 
patient of the irrelevant and the non-essential, 
an appreciation of the best thought of others 
and the power to assimilate it, a delight in the 
rigor of reason and the conquests of the mind, — 
all these come to one who has made the most 
important of all discoveries, that his mind is 



THE ART OF THINKING 135 

an excellent working organ which he has 
learned to guide and control, and whose pro- 
ductive energy is a continual interest and pleas- 
ure. The consciousness of intellectual power 
opens all ways before him and speeds him 
forward. Many a prospect lures him. He 
embarks upon many a voyage of discovery. 
Studies are regarded no longer as a discipline, 
but as an accomplishment. A restless spirit of 
curiosity possesses him. The fever of knowl- 
edge is in his blood. 

On the other hand, no one can become seri- 
ously or permanently interested in the products 
of another's mind who experiences no pleasure 
or satisfaction in the processes of his own. The 
power of appreciation must have its sources 
within. A young man in college who was heir 
to a large fortune was asked by one of his pro- 
fessors who had been watching his college 
career with some misgivings: "Why are you 
neglecting your work as you have been doing 
ever since you entered college ? You are aware 
that you are to occupy a most responsible posi- 
tion in the conduct of your father's estate to 
which you are the sole heir. Do you not care 



136 THE ART OF THINKING 

to have brains enough to enable you to dis- 
charge your duties in life with ability and pos- 
sibly with distinction ? " This evidently did 
not appeal very forcibly to the young man, for 
he rather naively replied: "I can always hire 
brains whenever I need them." It is difficult 
to say whether one is the more indignant at the 
hopeless lack of any concern for the develop- 
ment of his own mind, or at the complete igno- 
rance and disdain concerning the true value and 
dignity of the minds of others which this re- 
mark implies. 

Of course no art can be learned where there 
is no earnest purpose to master it. The art of 
thinking is no light undertaking. There must 
be some inner compulsion of such a permanent 
nature that it will prove capable of sustaining 
interest and energy in the arduous discipline 
which this art demands. It is not the teacher's 
function to supply a constant interest, and to 
be forever vigilant in removing difficulties and 
overcoming obstacles. His peculiar gift is to 
free the mind so that it can acquire an inde- 
pendence of judgment and a fertility of mental 
resource which are the essential features of a 



THE ART OF THINKING 137 

liberal education. While the teacher should 
not have the full burden of the task of stimu- 
lating the student's interest and sense of re- 
sponsibility, nevertheless his is a serious duty in 
this respect and at the same time an excep- 
tional privilege. A conspicuous illustration of 
the power of a teacher to awaken a mind wholly 
unconscious of itself is given in the life of Glad- 
stone. As a boy, Gladstone was at Eton for 
three years; during all this time he gave no 
evidence whatsoever of talent or of taste for 
the things of the mind. The following is the 
account which he himself gives of the intellectual 
crisis of his life which he experienced in his 
Eton days: 

"At this time there was not in me any desire 
to know or to excel. There was a barrister 
named Henry Hall Joy, a man who had taken 
a first at Oxford. He was very kind to me, and 
had made some efforts to inspire me with a love 
of books, if not of knowledge. Joy had a taste 
for classics, and made visions for me of honors 
at Oxford. But the subject only danced before 
my eyes as a will-o'-the-wisp, and without 
attracting me. I remained stagnant, without 



138 THE ART OF THINKING 

heart or hope. A change, however, arrived 
about Easter, 1822. My * remove' was then 
under Hawtrey (afterward head-master and pro- 
vost), who was always on the lookout for any 
bud which he could warm with a little sunshine. 
It was entirely due to him that I first owed the 
reception of a spark, the divince particulum 
aura, and conceived a dim idea that in some 
time, manner, and degree I might come to 
know/' (Morley, « Life of Gladstone,'' Vol I, 
pp. 29 f.) 

Every school-boy, it is true, is not a Gladstone 
in the making; nor is every master a Hawtrey. 
Nevertheless there is always the possibility that 
a chance spark may kindle some inflammable 
material. To quicken the first flickering flame 
of knowledge and thereby enable a student to 
possess his own mind — this is the highest at- 
tainment and reward of one who would teach 
others the art of thinking. 



IX 
THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

'T^HE life of a scholar is something more than 
a means of livelihood. It is a vocation; and 
where this is not recognized, the true scholar 
is wanting. The scholar is the link between 
the past and the present; the conservation of 
knowledge is in his keeping. His office is pri- 
marily that of an interpreter of truth; at times, 
however, he may become its priest and prophet 
as well. He springs from an ancient and hon- 
orable lineage. He is in line with that illustri- 
ous company of seekers after truth who have 
given in every generation an impetus to the 
thought and progress of the race. 

The scholar not only inherits the traditions 
established in the learning of the past, but by 
the very nature of his labors he is brought into 
intimate association with the scholars of his own 
day. This contemporary contact is by no means 
the least of his privileges. Of course not all 

139 



Ho VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

scholars are teachers and therefore of one body 
by virtue of their common interests and pur- 
suits. However, no one, I imagine, will deny 
that the natural habitat of the scholar is the 
school. The great universities of the Middle 
Ages and of modern times have been the homes 
of scholars. Without such a home the scholar 
would have been indeed an exile. 

There is an exceedingly significant saying 
which has been handed down to us from the 
old Greek astronomer and poet, Ptolemy: "He 
is not dead who giveth life to knowledge." This 
profound observation applies in an especial 
sense to those who have founded ou»r educa- 
tional institutions and secured them upon a 
permanent basis of efficiency, and who have 
fostered them in wisdom, faith, and persever- 
ance. There are many ways in which one may 
give life to knowledge, — by the spoken or writ- 
ten word, by a new thought, or through skill in 
putting an old thought in a new form, by dis- 
covery, by invention; but no contribution of this 
kind is so self-multiplying and so far-reaching in 
its results as that of establishing and maintain- 
ing a permanent centre for the diffusion and ex- 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 141 

tension of knowledge; and at the same time to 
this end creating a community of scholars with 
a body of scholarly traditions and a high stan- 
dard of scholarly excellence and ambition. 

Whenever we find such an institution, we are 
at the sources of life. For it represents some- 
thing more than the mere machinery of educa- 
tion. The school, the university, is never to be 
regarded as a machine; it is an organism. As an 
organism it is not only instinct with life as a 
whole, but the various parts also of which it is 
composed are themselves living beings. The 
forces which are active in such an organism are 
the powers of personality. The living spirit of 
the teacher must quicken the living spirit of his 
student. It is the play of life upon life. Con- 
sequently they who organize these living forces 
of knowledge and permanently institutionalize 
them do not die. They live again in all the 
sources of life which they create. They live 
again in every trained mind and in every tem- 
pered spirit which is the product of such influ- 
ences. They live again in every truth that is 
possessed, in every task that is performed, in 
every problem that is mastered, in every kindling 



i 4 2 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

flame of thought, in every advance of knowl- 
edge, in every comprehension of the past, and in 
every vision of the future; they live again, not 
only in the more serious labors of the scholar, 
but also in the joy of knowledge, in the simple 
pleasures of appreciation, and in the intimate 
comradeship of the scholar's craft; for the life 
which they impart to the things of the mind 
shows itself in the flower as well as the fruit 
of knowledge. 

The debt, therefore, which the scholar owes to 
those who initiate the great constructive forces 
in education is something more than a passing 
sentiment of gratitude. His is a more serious 
obligation. He is bound in honor to preserve 
these forces in the continuity of their develop- 
ment along lines of a widening and deepening 
progress. And to this end he needs to remind 
himself from time to time of his high vocation 
as a scholar. In relation to the pioneers of 
education and his predecessors in the field of his 
labors, he is in a peculiar sense the trustee of 
knowledge. The sacred funds of truth are in 
his keeping, and he is responsible not only for 
their security, but also for their transmission 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 143 

enlarged and enriched to the coming generations. 
Progress in knowledge is constantly interrupted, 
because time puts a limit upon all effort and 
attainment. With years cometh wisdom, also 
cometh the end. Another generation must 
begin the task of knowledge anew. And yet 
such a beginning may always be undertaken 
from a point of decided advantage, provided 
the teacher and scholar fulfil their obligations 
in any adequate manner. There is a growing 
body of truth which is the possession of the race, 
and which is the free heritage of every one who 
would walk in the way of knowledge. It is the 
inalienable right of all to share this common 
bounty of truth. To conserve this racial inheri- 
tance, to make it available for the new genera- 
tion, to place their feet in the way of progress, 
to put in their hands the lamp of knowledge, 
to bid them seek the truth and pursue it, — this is 
the scholar's vocation. 

There is, moreover, an additional obligation 
which every scholar owes to his distinguished 
ancestry. The truth of yesterday must be 
adapted to the needs of to-day. The scholar's 
function is not merely to transmit knowledge 



144 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

of one generation to another; he must be pre- 
pared also to interpret the knowledge which he 
possesses, and the process of interpretation is 
always a transmuting rather than a merely trans- 
mitting process. As knowledge is a living and 
a growing thing, it must possess the power of 
new adaptations. We are disloyal to one who 
utters a truth if we seek to stereotype it in fixed 
formula or final dogma. It is not the sole 
function of the scholar to mass facts and illus- 
trate them, nor of the teacher to hear recitations, 
to correct themes, and check the errors of mem- 
ory. Whether the scholar is writing a book or 
conducting a class exercise, it is his business 
above everything else to give life to knowledge. 
This is the chief office of the interpreter of truth. 
It is well also to remember that the living truth 
does not always appear full formed. It, too, has 
its stages of growth which it must pass through 
in order to come to the complete revelation of 
its nature. It is possible, therefore, and indeed 
it is quite natural to expect, that in the trans- 
mission of knowledge the scholar through the 
patient toil of research and the brooding of 
thought may also contribute to the truth already 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 145 

possessed a deeper meaning, a wider applica- 
tion, a more vigorous life. 

In the age in which we now live knowledge is 
changing with marvellous rapidity. The schol- 
ar's task, therefore, has never been so interesting, 
never so difficult. The notable discoveries dur- 
ing the last decade alone, in physics, chemistry, 
biology, bacteriology, and other sciences, have 
necessitated a distinctly more profound if not 
a new interpretation of nature. Not only the 
material content of knowledge, but its methods 
also reflect the spirit of progress which char- 
acterizes the activities and achievements of the 
present age. The new instruments of accuracy 
in research, the new processes of discovery and 
invention, and the more intimate knowledge of 
the sources in every field of inquiry certainly en- 
tail an obligation for larger results in scholar- 
ship than ever before. Unless the scholar has 
a discriminating appreciation of recently ac- 
quired truth he cannot interpret aright the truth 
of the past; and if he fails in this particular, 
he is recreant to his trust as the teacher and 
lover of knowledge. The work of restoration 
which the scholar must undertake in reference 



146 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

to the treasures of the past must be prosecuted 
with a wise consideration of its relation to the 
knowledge and the needs of the present. 

However, it should not be forgotten that 
amidst much that changes in the world of 
scholarly research, there is much also that re- 
mains constant. And it is to this constant ele- 
ment in truth that the scholar must preserve an 
unswerving loyalty. The popular philosophy 
of the day repudiates altogether the existence 
of any such constant element, and maintains 
that all truth whatsoever is variable, relative, 
shifting. Professor James, the most brilliant 
apostle of this creed of change, insists that "we 
must be prepared to find false to-morrow what 
is true to-day." This is a statement which in a 
restricted sense is true, and which admits of an 
exceedingly wide range of illustration. We are 
constrained to confess that we live throughout 
our days under bondage to the contingent, and 
that the hazard of uncertainty must be reckoned 
with in all our plans and undertakings. And 
yet while conceding all this, it nevertheless re- 
mains true that there are certain ideas which in 
the history of the race experience have become 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 147 

established for all time, for all places, and for all 
persons and things. These ideas rest upon a 
secure foundation. Amidst all that is fleeting 
and variable in thought and experience, there 
must be some background of truth which is un- 
changing. Otherwise the equation of life would 
consist solely of variables, and would be there- 
fore indeterminate and wholly devoid of any 
significance whatsoever. The variable must 
have the constant to give it meaning. We 
naturally incline to the belief that there are 
certain fundamental ideas and sentiments which 
are independent of time and circumstance, of 
the changing opinion and fashion of the day. 
Once true, they are always true. They are the 
fixed stars by which we take our reckoning and 
lay our course. 

The scholar particularly dare not ignore that 
consensus of thought which ages of reflection 
and experience have established. He must have 
some part in the commerce of truth. How- 
ever original he may be, he cannot wholly free 
himself from the past. Among its stores he is 
bound to find something fundamental and con- 
stitutive, which is both true to the reason and 



i 4 8 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

law to the will. I am not in sympathy with the 
declaration of Professor James, in his " Pragma- 
tism/' that we must "cultivate the attitude of 
looking away from first things, principles, catego- 
ries, supposed necessities, and of looking towards 
last things, fruits, consequences, facts." On 
the contrary I believe most profoundly that the 
most significant quest of the scholar is the en- 
deavor to discover the "first things" which 
constitute the ultimate ground of our experi- 
ence. The mind which has not formed the 
habit of regarding "first things" will hardly be 
capable of commanding the "last things." To 
comprehend the beginnings, to understand the 
essential nature and ground of any group of 
phenomena under investigation, as well as the 
implications which they necessitate, is indis- 
pensable to the clear appreciation of their worth, 
or to the possibility of further discovery in the 
line of their development. To discern the 
truth that is fundamental, to appreciate its 
significance, to emphasize and proclaim it, to 
cause it to prevail by making it intelligible, — 
this is the scholar's vocation. And in this 
high office he is the priest of truth. As such he 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 149 

must guard its sacred oracles, maintain its tra- 
ditions, follow the lead of its light, and cherish 
the spirit of devotion to its cause. 

The scholar who is worthy the name cannot 
be sceptical concerning everything. He must 
believe in something, and believe it profoundly 
and bear witness to its truth. Complete scep- 
ticism is the reductio ad absurdum of scholarship. 
Doubt may be the beginning of inquiry; it is 
surely not the goal. To doubt is merely the 
determination to see deeper and understand 
more clearly. Doubt always marks a transition 
stage in the processes of investigation. It does 
not produce satisfaction, only restlessness. In 
its normal function it points to something be- 
yond itself, to a more comprehensive knowl- 
edge, to a more securely grounded conviction. 
Doubt leads to the truth which lies in the past 
as well as that which beckons us from the fut- 
ure. To allow the sceptical attitude therefore 
to become a permanent disposition breeds a 
cynical spirit; and nothing is so inimical to the 
vigor of scholarship as a cynical mood which 
is ever petulantly asking: "What is truth?" 

Our fathers believed in a body of truth that 



150 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

changeth not from generation to generation, 
that is like the word of God which abideth for- 
ever. They would have repudiated with scorn 
of indignation the modern pragmatical doctrine 
that "the true is only the expedient in the way 
of our thinking, just as the right is only the ex- 
pedient in the way of our behaving/ 5 A false 
theory of knowledge based upon a perverted 
theory of ethics such as this would never have 
won their allegiance. They built upon a more 
stable foundation. They believed in the sover- 
eignty of reason and the compulsion of logical 
implication — that compulsion which recognizes 
uniformity in science and demands consistency 
in morals. They believed that man is born 
under an uncompromising law of righteousness 
which is above expediency and the suggestions 
of policy and convenience. They believed that 
man is a person and not a thing, that he is or- 
dained to progress, that he is an end in himself 
and never merely a means to some other end. 
They believed that the law of mutual co-opera- 
tion should prevail throughout the family of 
human beings, and that in the violation of that 
law the integrity of society is permanently im- 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 151 

paired. They believed that all knowledge must 
minister to righteousness. They believed in 
the cause of honor, in the cause of justice, in 
the cause of freedom, in the cause of the Eternal 
God. This creed is our inheritance. Our 
highest obligation as scholars is to preserve 
inviolate the ancestral continuity of conviction 
and certitude. The scholarship of the present 
will doubtless carry us far beyond certain tradi- 
tions of the past. We will leave much behind 
that possesses only an antiquarian value. But 
with all that must be forgotten and with all that 
is new, we dare not repudiate those fundamental 
principles — old-fashioned they may be but never 
obsolete — in which reason is justified, character 
is grounded, and moral vigor is maintained. 

All scholarship must make eventually for the 
broadening and deepening of life, the life of the 
mind and the life of the spirit. The results of 
scholarship are not in the interests of a favored 
class, but of humanity in general. The body 
of scholars is not a fraternity whose order is to 
be developed and enriched for its own sake. 
Within its borders there are no occult mysteries 
nor exclusive privileges. The word which a 



152 VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 

scholar utters may be understood in the first 
instance only by those who speak the same lan- 
guage and are conversant with the same sym- 
bols. And yet the periods of the most produc- 
tive scholarship have usually called forth their 
interpreter, their prophet, some peculiarly gifted 
genius who possesses the faculty of making the 
results of scholarship intelligible to the masses, 
at least so far as these results have a bearing 
upon the life and character of a people. The 
old Greek philosophy had its Socrates, Chris- 
tian theology its Augustine, the Reformation its 
Luther, the philosophy of the French Revolu- 
tion its Rousseau, and German philosophy its 
poet interpreters Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and 
Herder, and in another land and tongue its 
prophets, Coleridge and Carlyle. 

Every scholar cannot be a prophet to the 
world, but he can contribute something to the 
message which one day the chosen prophet will 
bring in the name of scholarship to the heart 
and mind of a people. The individual may 
always remain a toiler in secret. The service 
that is indirect, however, is none the less im- 
portant although it may be less conspicuous. 



VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR 153 

A single thought is often born of many minds. 
In the progress of the truth, the individual 
scholar here and there who has contributed to 
it may be forgotten, and he may never enjoy the 
recognition and the praise which is his due. 
Nevertheless he has a deep satisfaction in the 
consciousness that the results of his labors 
though lost to sight have become in a small 
measure at least a part of the thought of the 
world. 

Upon the stone which marks the grave of 
Fichte by the Oranienburg gate in Berlin, there 
is this inscription, which adequately expresses 
the scholar's vocation and the scholar's reward: 
"The teachers shall shine as the brightness of 
the firmament, and they that turn many to 
righteousness as the stars that shine forever and 
ever." 



X 

THE SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

npO-DAY our schools and colleges are under 
fire of criticism from many quarters; and 
the burden of the indictment against present- 
day methods in education seems to be that many 
if not most of the subjects which are taught are 
superfluous. In reference to this charge, how- 
ever, I am inclined to apply Voltaire's whimsical 
paradox — Le superflu, chose trees necessaire. 
The zeal to eradicate the superfluous may pluck 
by the roots many a plant of whose flower and 
fruit we may not be deprived without incalcula- 
ble loss. What standard is available, according 
to which one can discriminate between that 
which is superfluous and that which is not ? 
The answer to this question is not far to seek; 
for it is heard above the many voices of our age 
with insistent reiteration — "whatever does not 
contribute directly to efficiency in life, that is 
superfluous." This is the voice of pragmatism 
in philosophy, of utilitarianism in morals; in 

154 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 155 

political circles this same idea is expressed in the 
creed of "practical politics"; in the world of 
industrial enterprise it lurks in the phrase, 
"business is business," whose tautology is a 
flimsy disguise of irresponsible practices; in 
religion even a similar disposition is shown in 
the desire to convert the church into a working 
club instead of a house of worship. 

With many this idea of efficiency, as the end 
of all education and the standard of all values, 
is still further particularized by limiting effi- 
ciency to the sphere of one's professional or 
business activities. To make a man efficient in 
his special calling, — that, it is insisted, should be 
the sole task of education. And consequently 
there is a general marking down of all values 
to that level. This tendency is seen in the em- 
phasis which some of our educational institu- 
tions are placing upon technical and profes- 
sional courses which even in the undergraduate 
years are pursued to the exclusion of all the 
more humanistic interests. Fit the boy for the 
special work he has to do. Let everything be 
sacrificed to that end. Here, it is alleged, is a 
principle which will enable one to devise not 



156 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

only a satisfactory curriculum but also a pro- 
gramme of life. If the young man, is expecting 
to be a doctor, let him confine his attention 
solely to the studies which will contribute valu- 
able material to the store of knowledge needed 
in this profession — such as the general knowl- 
edge of plant and animal life, of human anat- 
omy and physiology, of chemistry and kindred 
subjects. Let him begin to narrow into pro- 
fessional grooves before his entrance into the 
professional school. He will thus save time, 
and prevent an enormous waste of energy. 
When we come, however, to examine this posi- 
tion more particularly, even upon the footing 
of efficiency, it is evident that the adherents of 
such a theory are in grave danger of defeating 
their own purposes. The man most efficient in 
his business or profession is the one who pos- 
sesses some reserve power over and above 
that which he may ever be called upon to ex- 
pend upon the actual labors of his specialty. 
A man always needs more than he uses. He 
who can do but one thing, never does it su- 
premely well. An excess of power is an essen- 
tial and significant factor in efficiency. 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 157 

In determining the strength of materials, the 
mechanical engineer never thinks of attempting 
to calculate stress and strain forces so precisely 
as to adjust a given beam or girder to the exact 
load it is required to bear. On the contrary he 
recognizes the necessity of allowing for a sub- 
stantial factor of safety, so that the strength of 
the material will exceed the limit of any possible 
exigency. It is the surplus strength that makes 
all construction solid and secure. In a similar 
manner a man's strength must exceed the exac- 
tions of his tasks by a reassuring margin of 
efficiency; otherwise his work is but poorly done. 
Every man of force should possess some power 
in his nature which can be felt even when it is 
not actually operative; and when it is operative, 
it should give the impression that its resources 
are inexhaustible. 

It is in the reserve power which we insensibly 
discern back of a man's personality that our 
confidence in the lawyer, the doctor, the minister, 
or the engineer is grounded. The difference 
between the ordinary and the extraordinary 
man in professional or business life, lies in just 
this surplus of power which in the daily routine 



158 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

of life is never required. When one possesses 
such a power, his efficiency is increased in a 
marvellous degree; for he brings to his work 
a mind larger than his tasks, and a nature 
stronger than the pressure which it must sus- 
tain. On the other hand that man is doomed 
to mediocrity who has in his possession no super- 
fluous knowledge beyond the ordinary demands 
of his craft, and who finds himself a stranger in 
any company beyond the bounds of his own 
guild. 

Therefore if in the studies which we select as 
the best preparation of a young man for his fut- 
ure work in life, we have constantly in mind only 
their direct bearing upon the special field of his 
activity in later years, then we are doing that 
young man a very serious and distinct injury. 
If the range of his knowledge is merely coexten- 
sive with the programme of his prospective duties 
in the limited field of his profession, we may ex- 
pect from him only very meagre attainment. 
Liberal knowledge means precisely this, that it 
serves to emancipate a man from the bondage 
of his specialty. He is at home in other fields, 
and when from his various excursions into their 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 159 

regions he returns to his own work, he moves in 
the sphere of his labors more boldly and there- 
fore more efficiently because he need not live 
always under the limitations of its boundaries. 
Our college courses should not attempt to pre- 
pare a man primarily for any particular set of 
tasks, but for a far more significant and myste- 
rious event, — the coming into possession of a 
mind. A man's mind is the instrument of his 
productive power. The measure of his future 
efficiency is his mental capability. Therefore 
it should be the end of all education to develop 
every possibility of the growing mind to the 
full extent of its capacity and strength. Every 
stream of knowledge which has its source in 
the hidden springs of the mind sooner or later 
finds its way into the central current of life, 
adding velocity and volume to its flow. The 
very thing which may be regarded as superflu- 
ous often proves a revelation of concealed pos- 
sibility and of potential power. The college 
course is a period when the student and teacher 
together should be engaged in prospecting ad- 
ventures for the very purpose of discovering the 
veins worthy to mine. Certainly nothing can 



160 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

be deemed superfluous where everything is pos- 
sible. 

It is the glory of the industrial world in the 
last generation that its inventive minds have 
solved the problem of its waste material. They 
have acquired the art of transforming the super- 
fluous into valuable products. The residual 
phenomena have disclosed sources of unim- 
agined possibilities which have made for the 
comfort, convenience, and efficiency of our 
modern life. In the acquisition of knowledge 
likewise, the by-products are not to be despised 
nor lightly overlooked. In them there may lurk 
the germs of power which in the years of an 
active life may pass through many transforma- 
tions, appearing now and again in a force whose 
source is unrecognizable, but which neverthe- 
less may give to the mental energies of the man 
an added momentum and impact. 

It is well, therefore, in the early years of 
training to strive to develop as many and as 
diverse interests as possible. It is the period 
of discovery as well as of drudgery and routine. 
That mind is richly furnished which has estab- 
lished for itself a widely ramifying net-work of 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 161 

associations. The more complex this mesh of 
associated material, the greater is the possibility 
of suggestion, leading to new points of view, to 
invention, or to discovery; the greater also the 
possibility of forming the habits of critical and 
mature judgment. Professor Ernst Mach of the 
university of Vienna, in an essay entitled "Acci- 
dent in Invention and Discovery," draws atten- 
tion to many interesting cases wherein accident 
has been a conspicuous factor in the field of 
scientific research. It is very significant, how- 
ever, that in every instance which he mentions 
and in every instance which suggests itself to 
memory, is one in which the chance suggestion 
occurs to a mind already possessing a wealth 
of profound and varied knowledge. 

Judged, therefore, even from the point of view 
of efficiency alone, the superfluous plays a part 
in our training of which we are never fully con- 
scious and which we never adequately appreciate. 
Nevertheless this by no means exhausts the sum 
total of its good offices. It serves to minister 
also to the making of that margin of the man 
which has a value over and above his profes- 
sional activities and attainments. To some 



162 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

practical minds it seems wholly unnecessary 
that any man should be more than a good work- 
ing machine. However, the plus element, which 
may be superfluous as regards the mere machine 
idea of human activity, nevertheless marks the 
essential quality of man as man. 

This human being so variously endowed, 
with his wide range of interests and sympathies, 
sustaining manifold relations with the great 
world about him, rejoicing in his varied pleasures 
and pursuits, this centre from which so many 
lines of actual and of potential power radiate, 
surely this creature is something more than a 
machine for producing briefs and prescriptions, 
contracts and inventories, investments, balance- 
sheets, and tariff bills. The man must be big- 
ger than his business or his profession. He is 
not only a lawyer, a doctor, a legislator, but 
he is a citizen, a companion, husband, father, 
friend. He has innumerable points of contact 
with his fellows. The responsibilities of life 
press upon him from all sides. If there is no 
surplus of mind and heart to meet them, the 
man is poor indeed. It is the overflow of a large 
nature, the superfluous if you wish so to charac- 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 163 

terize it, which lends tone and color to a man's 
life, which gives him a place in his community, 
and which makes him a significant part of his 
day and generation. Back of his spoken word, 
back of his deed, back of his silent presence in 
the company of his own kind there is an im- 
mediate recognition of the warmth and wealth 
of his personality. It is the superfluous that 
marks the difference between justice and gen- 
erosity, between bare decency and magnanim- 
ity, between the full measure and the over- 
flowing. It is the superfluous quality of a man's 
nature which provokes love, and not merely 
admiration and respect. 

Asking one of my colleagues recently concern- 
ing his estimate of a certain eminent scholar, 
he replied: "He is a great scholar but a small 
man." Now there is certainly very little satis- 
faction in the consciousness that one is ranked 
as a brilliant lawyer or a skilful surgeon, if at 
the same time he has the common reputation of 
being a miserable specimen of a man. At the 
last count a man is judged according to the ex- 
tent and depth of the vein of humanity which 
may be discernible in his nature. By that test 



i6 4 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

he stands or falls. The moment a hollow ring 
is detected in his word or deed, that man is lost. 
No amount of skill or proficiency can compen- 
sate for the want of that solid basis of manliness 
which from the strictly practical view of utility 
may be regarded by many as altogether super- 
fluous. 

There is a certain type of provincialism which 
is temporal rather than spatial, which holds a 
man fast within the boundaries of his own age. 
No one is truly cosmopolitan who knows noth- 
ing of the world beyond the confines of his own 
generation. To live the life of to-day in its 
fulness one must know the life of yesterday. 
To be a citizen of the world, one must have some 
appreciation of the world's thought, its efforts 
and achievements, its faith and its hope in the 
ages which are past. To one who does not find 
himself a stranger in a distant century there 
comes an expansion of mind and of sympathies 
which enables him to bring to his own day and 
to his own life the deep satisfactions of super- 
fluous knowledge and power. The foundations 
for this interest in the far-off lands of time must 
be laid during the college years. And it should 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 165 

be regarded as an essential function of this 
man-making enterprise to which our colleges are 
pledged, to stimulate and foster such an interest 
by every conceivable means. 

The philistine is usually efficient. There is 
no charge against him on that score. Indeed 
it is just because he is so practically efficient 
and nothing more that he is the philistine. His 
values are all standardized. He has no appre- 
ciations, only appraisals and inventories. He 
is in the world but not of it, because his tastes 
and interests command so small a corner of it. 
Several years ago, while spending a few weeks 
in Rome, I chanced to meet one of these hope- 
less individuals who was completely stript of all 
superfluous interests and knowledge. He had 
possessed the native wit sufficient to accumu- 
late a large fortune. As regards the treasures 
of Rome, however, he was the veriest pauper. 
He did not know enough to conceal his igno- 
rance. Seated opposite to me at dinner one 
evening, I overheard him asking his neighbor, a 
young Scotchwoman who was a student of arch- 
aeology in Rome: "What is there worth seeing 
in the Palace of the Caesars ? There is nothing 



166 SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 

there but ruins, is there ?" The reply was elo- 
quent in its simplicity, and penetrating in its 
complete understanding of the man. "No," she 
said, "nothing but ruins." Her questioner was 
beyond both instruction and rebuke. In his 
nature there was nothing superfluous, and con- 
sequently everything that was not reflected in 
his shallow and limited capacity was regarded 
by him as itself superfluous. For him the ruins 
of Rome could better be replaced by modern 
office buildings, and its forum become indeed 
an actual market-place. To a limited nature 
most things will naturally seem superfluous, just 
as to a great nature nothing is superfluous. 

The crucial tests of life usually prove the man 
rather than his professional ability and skill. 
The emergencies which call for instant decision 
and prompt action tap the hidden sources which 
never can be discerned by surface observation. 
What the world may never have discovered, 
what the man himself may have been wholly 
unconscious of possessing, — far-off dreams and 
fancies, records of forgotten interests and studies 
indelibly stamped upon his nature, experiences 
which in their time may have served to discip- 



SUPERFLUOUS IN EDUCATION 167 

line the mind and temper the spirit, — these su- 
perfluous elements of his being burst into power, 
and become efficient to heal, to strengthen and 
to save. 

It is the superfluous which forms the unseen 
foundations of character and unconsciously 
fortifies our will and purposes. It is the super- 
fluous also which gives zest to simple pleasures, 
which makes a tramp through the woods a 
delight and not a bore, which provides an avo- 
cation for us as well as a vocation, so that when 
the office or work-room is closed the doors of 
the world swing open to us. It is the superflu- 
ous which puts a book into our hand and crowds 
the mind with new thoughts and quickens the 
heart with a fresh impulse. 

Without something superfluous, nothing is 
complete. The teacher must possess superflu- 
ous knowledge, a superfluous interest also in the 
young life about him; the man of affairs must 
possess superfluous power; our companions, su- 
perfluous wit and good-humor; our friends, su- 
perfluous affection and sympathy; and he who 
would advance the world's progress, superfluous 
enthusiasm and hope. 



XI 

SECONDARY STRAINS 

TN the late afternoon of August 29, 1907, the 
great cantilever bridge across the St. Law- 
rence River at Quebec gave way of its own weight, 
and some seventy workmen engaged upon this 
massive structure were carried down to death 
amidst a tangled mass of twisted rods and beams. 
The bridge was carrying at the time no unusual 
load; indeed it was carrying no load whatsoever 
save the weight of its own structure; for it was 
still in the process of building, and even before 
it could be put to any actual test of its calcu- 
lated strength it collapsed and crashed into the 
river beneath. 

The whistle of the construction company had 
just sounded the end of the day's work, the last 
day's work for the bridge builders save the four 
or five who alone were rescued from the falling 
mass. This tragedy of engineering skill and of 

constructive enterprise, this tragedy also of 

168 



SECONDARY STRAINS 169 

human life completely bewildered the scientific 
world. There is a mystery about an event 
which in the light of mechanical theory is im- 
possible. This structure according to the cal- 
culation of the most expert and skilful engineers 
was capable of supporting over twice the load 
it was carrying at the time of its fall. Subse- 
quently the most painstaking investigation of 
the wreckage disclosed the fact that no defec- 
tive material had been used in the construc- 
tion; moreover, no dynamic shock nor unusual 
wind pressure had occurred in connection with 
the disaster. What, then, was the structural 
weakness which caused this bridge to fall un- 
der its own weight ? Was there some colossal 
blunder in the strain calculations ? Was there 
some egregious error in the plans of construc- 
tion ? Was it the carelessness of foreman or 
workmen ? 

For some time no one could give a satisfactory 
answer, although many were essayed. Finally, 
however, when the official report of the engineer- 
ing experts was made public, the mystery was 
cleared. It seems that the beginnings of this 
stupendous collapse were traced to one of the 



170 SECONDARY STRAINS 

great bottom chords of the bridge, designed to 
support the main structure resting upon it. 
This chord was a latticed beam fifty-seven feet 
in length, composed of four ribs or webs braced 
together. The bridge fell because there was a 
buckling of this supporting beam. And this 
buckling of the beam occurred because its sev- 
eral parts were not sufficiently braced together 
so as to enable them to act as a whole. Instead 
of forming a single compact piece, they were 
merely so many separate pieces, and therefore 
incapable of offering adequate resisting power. 
No part was at all defective; each was equal to 
the load it was calculated to bear, with a con- 
siderable factor of safety provided for. Strong 
in themselves, their combined strength was 
wanting merely because the parts did not hold 
tightly together. 

What are known as the secondary strains, to 
which a structure such as this bridge is exposed, 
had so loosened the several parts of this im- 
mense central chord that it gave way under the 
pressure of the primary strains — that is, those 
strains due to the actual load which a structure 
must support. 



SECONDARY STRAINS 171 

It seems that in the work upon the Quebec 
bridge rivets had been used which were slightly 
small for the eyes which they were supposed to 
fill completely and tightly; consequently the 
parts were not held compactly together, and so 
the ordinary vibrations and changes in the 
pressure tension of this huge structure would 
tend naturally to loosen them more and more. 
With the loosening of the parts the long beam 
would necessarily begin to sag somewhat; and 
for every fraction of an inch which such a sup- 
porting member bends out of the straight line 
there is a rapidly increasing ratio of weakness 
until finally the elastic limit is reached and the 
crash comes. The secondary strains cannot 
break but they can loosen and bend; they thus 
weaken a structure so that it is no longer ca- 
pable of resisting the primary strains. 

It is perhaps not too forced an application to 
discover in this disaster certain suggestions as 
to the significance of the secondary strains of 
life in their bearing upon character and conduct. 
From time immemorial, human activity has 
been regarded as a process of building. Each 
individual erects some kind of a structure into 



i;2 SECONDARY STRAINS 

which he builds his deeds, his thoughts, and his 
purposes. Like a bridge his life must carry its 
load. Other lives must pass and repass upon it. 
There are many who come to depend implicitly 
upon its stability and to feel an instinctive secu- 
rity in its power to resist the daily tests of stress 
and strain. While it stands, the commerce of 
man is promoted, and life is safeguarded from 
peril of accident and calamity. But if it falls, 
others go down with it into the flood. 

The human disaster, when the collapse comes, 
causes the same kind of bewilderment as that 
which was occasioned by the fall of the Quebec 
bridge. It is the fall of the strong man that is 
so difficult to understand. Of the weak man 
we naturally expect disaster; and there is no 
shock of surprise when it comes. But when the 
strong man sinks under his load, then all of our 
calculations seem to have wofully miscarried. 
We look at the wreckage in amazement and ex- 
claim: "How is it possible that such weakness 
should come out of such strength ? " Here is 
one whose life has been a long discipline of en- 
durance. He has accustomed himself to carry 
heavier and heavier burdens as the years have 



SECONDARY STRAINS 173 

gone on, and to resist greater and greater press- 
ure. His powers of perseverance and resource 
have been taxed to the uttermost and have never 
failed. His name in the community is synony- 
mous with stability and integrity. Of a sudden, 
however, this structure gives way of its own 
weight, and crashes into the depths which mark 
and yet hide its shame. 

What is the reason ? The answer to this 
question may be suggested by the Quebec 
bridge. May it not be possible that this man 
has been capable of resisting the primary strains 
of life, but not the secondary ? His life has 
been strong to bear its load, even to endure the 
storm pressure which it has been called upon to 
meet from time to time, but possibly it has not 
been able to withstand the shaking and loosen- 
ing of its parts, the friction of their wearing one 
upon the other day after day, the consequent 
sagging of the whole and the final point of 
breaking. 

Character is composite. Its supporting mem- 
bers which are variously related must be com- 
pactly braced together. A very insignificant 
element may serve to hold more important parts 



174 SECONDARY STRAINS 

in place. Of what avail the strong massive 
plates if there is a shearing off of the rivets 
which bind them together ? The first traces 
of inconsistency, the breaking down of princi- 
ple in small and seemingly immaterial particu- 
lars, some policy of indirection, some concealed 
methods, some disingenuous explanation, these 
symptoms, slight in importance though they 
may seem to be, nevertheless mark the begin- 
nings of possible disaster. The man's char- 
acter is no longer whole. And this is precisely 
equivalent to saying that he is no longer a man 
of integrity. The loosening of the elements of 
character, the elements of honor, of honesty, of 
self-respect, of self-reverence, throw the man's 
whole nature out of the straight line. With this 
sagging of character both its supporting and 
resisting power are immeasurably lessened; and 
one day it gives way under the pressure of a 
load no greater than those we have been accus- 
tomed to see it bear year after year. 

Then we ask how it is possible that a man 
with such tested character should come to dis- 
appoint every expectation and promise of his 
nature. According to our calculations this 



SECONDARY STRAINS 175 

programme of disaster was impossible. In our 
reckonings, however, we never for a moment 
suspected, possibly the man himself never sus- 
pected, the steady pressure of the secondary 
strains in his life. The world sees only the 
disaster; it does not see how the man himself 
by slow but sure processes of deterioration day 
after day has been preparing for it. 

The very consciousness that one has overcome 
successfully, perhaps easily, the primary strains 
of life may in itself tend to put a man off guard 
as regards the secondary strains to which his 
nature is exposed. He ignores them; they may 
pass unnoticed until seen by their effects upon 
him, and these effects may have created already 
centres of weakness which it is too late to re- 
inforce. Some supporting chord may have 
reached its elastic limit, and the breaking-point 
is inevitable. 

How often this happens. We observe it 
again and again. A young man proves himself 
strong to resist the temptations of his early 
youth. He passes through them all unscathed, 
he shows himself diligent, self-restrained, obedi- 
ent. He keeps his head cool and his feet on the 



176 SECONDARY STRAINS 

ground. Later he comes to the years of strug- 
gle, when all efforts are bent upon establishing 
himself securely in the business or professional 
world. He is not afraid of work. He eagerly 
seeks it, and seeks, too, the hours of extra ser- 
vice. He toils early and late. He is industrious, 
thrifty, capable. His courage and enthusiasm 
are never for a moment abated. The burdens 
which he bears only serve tc increase his strength 
and develop his powers. His career is one of 
steady progress. The primary strains of life 
he has withstood conspicuously and nobly. 

He now meets the temptations of middle-age, 
subtle, strong, and undermining — temptations 
which for their testing and searching power are 
incomparably more formidable than any of the 
trials of youth. The secondary strains begin 
to operate. They are with him the strains of 
success. For with success comes leisure, added 
sources of power, the means of gratifying every 
chance desire, and the call of ambition. The 
simple setting of his life has been replaced by 
an increasing complexity of interests and activ- 
ities. The old delights begin to pall, and he 
craves the stimulation of more highly spiced 



SECONDARY STRAINS 177 

pleasures. The intoxication of success may in- 
duce a recklessness of enterprise which puts in 
jeopardy the fortunes of himself and of others. 
Their happiness, and possibly their lives, is in 
his keeping. The individual temperament will 
in most cases determine the direction and extent 
of the lines of strain. Whatever the weak point 
of his nature may be, it is bound to feel the 
pressure due to the extra burden of weight which 
success always entails. In the calculations of 
strains for a bridge or building, a storm factor 
is reckoned with in order to provide for the ex- 
ceptional pressure of high winds or even of a 
hurricane upon the structure. For man, how- 
ever, it would be far more important and to the 
point, to compute a prosperity factor, and allow 
it, moreover, to fall well within a wide margin 
of safety. 

The strains of struggle seem often to steady 
a man; the pressure, however, of success proves 
too strong for him to withstand. In the fight 
he is noble, but in the victory ignoble. Caesar 
once said this of Pompey: that he knew how to 
win a victory but he did not know how to use 
it. This is in a measure illustrated also by our 



i 7 8 SECONDARY STRAINS 

late civil war. As a people we withstood the 
shock of battle and the strain of the long years 
of national trial. The secondary strains came 
with the tests of reconstruction. These strains, 
unhappily, were not so nobly resisted. They 
created a loosening and separating of the strong 
elements of our national character to such an 
extent that when we turn our thoughts to this 
period of our history, it provokes just condem- 
nation and shame. And in the progress of our 
national life during the last generation also, we 
have been strong enough and wise enough to re- 
sist the primary strains. It is in the secondary 
strains that our dangers obviously lie. There 
are many forces now at work which are un- 
settling and disorganizing, and which tend 
to unfit us for the supreme test when it 
comes. 

The testing strains, however, are by no means 
confined to the years or to the experiences of 
success. There are many who have never 
known success in any full or overflowing meas- 
ure, whose natures, nevertheless, are under the 
constant pressure of certain secondary strains 
quite as serious and quite as menacing. There 



SECONDARY STRAINS 179 

is a man who has passed that period of his life 
when all things seem possible, when hope runs 
high and the dreams of the future bring joy and 
the eager haste to realize their alluring proph- 
ecies. For this man, life has become a routine 
and a discipline. Opportunities have come and 
gone; the actual in all its grim reality has re- 
placed the possible. His habits have set into 
hard and fast lines. He no longer looks for the 
surprise of the unexpected or for the glorious 
chance of an untried career. The unknown 
has now no charm of mystery about it — only 
dread and fear. Courage begins to falter, the 
spirit loses its spring, and hope dies. Human 
strength, like steel supports under constant 
tension, without change and without rest, loses 
its elasticity and consequently its live power of 
resistance. 

When one yields to the pressure of discourage- 
ment, and supinely submits to the fate of cir- 
cumstance, when he resigns himself to ineffect- 
ual moods and to the cynical sufferance of the 
inevitable, then it is that the dead weight of the 
load long carried crushes and kills him. When 
the secondary strains of life weaken and wreck 



i8o SECONDARY STRAINS 

a man's spirit, he falls long before the breaking- 
point is reached. 

The strains of monotony and of dulness, of 
work without reward, of responsibilities with- 
out accompanying authority and the liberty of 
initiative, of the grind of life without its pleas- 
ures, of patience without hope, of duty which 
has become mechanical, and of purposes whose 
realization is merely the regular antecedent of 
their repetition, these are the strains from which 
some lives, indeed many lives, are never free, 
but which they must resist until the end. No 
wonder that many a stout heart and brave spirit 
grows faint and fails. 

There are some natures, however, which are 
never affected in the least by any of these sec- 
ondary strains of life, simply because from the 
beginning they have yielded constantly to the 
pressure of the primary. They need no subtle 
weakening process to prepare them for failure. 
They have by nature no moral force, and there- 
fore they instinctively adapt themselves to the 
pressure of native propensity without so much 
as offering a show of resistance. The charac- 
ters of Shylock and Iago are determined by the 



SECONDARY STRAINS 181 

primary strains of their own natures; Macbeth 
and Hamlet, on the other hand, are the victims 
of the complex secondary strains which served 
to bring naturally great natures to a miserable 
end. Cardinal Woolsey yielded to the second- 
ary strains of his ambition, and hence his fall; 
Richard III, however, was by nature inhumanly 
cruel, and therefore the primary strains of his 
own evil spirit determined his character, his ca- 
reer, and his destiny. The tragedy of the second- 
ary strains is that they destroy noble lives, turn- 
ing strength to weakness and glory to shame. 
The primary strains are usually obvious. 
They appear within the sphere of ordinary 
observation. We can reckon with them and 
within certain limits we can predict the results 
to which they may give rise. The secondary 
strains, however, are concealed. We are not 
apt to notice them until they stand revealed in 
the disasters which they cause. They work in- 
directly, slowly, and surprise us in our weakness. 
For the reason, therefore, that these secondary 
strains are so difficult to recognize and to pro- 
vide against, we should regard with a keen sus- 
picion any tendency on our part to temper the 



i8z SECONDARY STRAINS 

rigor of our moral convictions or practices. 
Our manners may be flexible but not our morals. 
A slight relaxing of moral tension here or there 
in our conduct may throw the whole structure of 
our lives out of line, and that always means a 
decreased power of resistance in the hour of 
trial which must inevitably come. 

There was never a time in the busy affairs 
of man when straight conduct was so much 
needed as now. The very complexity of our 
modern life gives scope to the play of these sec- 
ondary strains. The fever of excitement, the 
intensity of competition, the struggle for place 
and prominence, the haste and rush of the daily 
round, all tend to increase the strain and to 
apply the pressure variously and constantly to 
the weak parts of our nature. The mystery is 
that all do not give way sooner or later. The 
integrity of the man, the whole man, — that alone 
can withstand the strain. 

In one of Kipling's sketches, "The Bridge 
Builder," he describes a young engineer who 
is engaged upon the construction of a bridge 
across the river Ganges. In the midst of the 
work the floods from the mountain freshets 



SECONDARY STRAINS 183 

swell the river beyond its banks and to the very 
floor of the bridge. The work is in imminent 
peril of being swept away with the rising waters. 
It is the day of judgment for the bridge builder. 
"For himself the crash meant everything — 
everything that made a hard life worth living. 
They would say, the men of his own profession 
— he remembered the half-pitying things that he 
himself had said when Lockhart's new water- 
works burst and broke down in brick-heaps and 
sludge, and Lockhart's spirit broke in him and 
he died. He remembered what he himself had 
said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big 
cyclone by the sea; and most he remembered 
poor Hartropp's face three weeks later when the 
shame had marked it. . . . There were no ex- 
cuses in his service. Government might listen, 
perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by 
his bridge, as that stood or fell." 



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